Tongues Untied

director: Marlon Riggs

original title: Tongues Untied

country: United States

year: 1989

running time: 55 min.

synopsis

This cinematic poem and voiceband in one is an audiovisual expression of the eponymous “tongues untied,” serving as a symbolic break of the silence that has plagued the Black American homosexual community for a long time. It becomes solely a manifesto for identifying a difference that has been consciously enforced between the predominantly black heterosexual majority and the alienated white gay minority. The question of race divides not only society as a whole, but also the minorities themselves all across the board. The heavily poeticised text of the film presented in an occasional rap rhythm of mixed voices is largely a self-confident commitment to an experience that is exceptional against its own will.

biography

Marlon Riggs (1957–1994) byl afroamerický filmař, pedagog, básník a aktivista za práva gayů. Po absolvování univerzity prošel na různých pozicích praxí při natáčení dokumentů pro nezávislá studia. Dokumentární film také vyučoval na univerzitě v Berkeley. Ve své tvorbě se zaměřoval na problematiku reprezentace pohlaví a rasy, hlavně s ohledem na projevy homofobie vyjadřované americkou společností.