Directed by Marlon Riggs • 1989 • United States
Made, in director Marlon Riggs’s own words, to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” this radical blend of documentary and performance defies the stigmas surrounding Black gay sexuality in the belief that, as long as shame prevails, liberation cannot be possible. Through music and dance, words and poetry by such pathbreaking writers as Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam—and by turns candid, humorous, and heartbreaking interviews with queer African American men—TONGUES UNTIED gives voice to what it means to live as an outsider in both a Black community rife with homophobia and a largely white gay subculture poisoned by racism. A lightning rod in the culture wars of the 1980s that incited a right-wing furor over public funding for the arts, the film has lost none of its life-affirming resonance.
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Maggots and Men
Directed by Cary Cronenwett • 2009 • United States
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Stafford’s Story
Directed by Susan Muska • 1992 • United States
Stafford recounts a memorable encounter at a sex club.
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The Doom Generation
Directed by Gregg Araki • 1995 • United States, France
Starring James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon SchaechGregg Araki takes a road trip to hell in this wild, meth- and fast-food-fueled joyride through the margins of a menacing American wasteland. When they inadvertently link up with a dangero...