Tongues Untied

  • Marlon Riggs: Tongues Untied, 1989

  • Marlon Riggs: Tongues Untied, 1989

  • Gail Dolgin, Robin Fryday: The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement, 2011

  • Saturday, Aug 29, 2026

    7 PM (80 mins)
    BAMPFA

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Tongues Untied

  • Introduction

    Dr. Artel Great is the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in African-American Cinema Studies and Associate Professor of Cinema and Media at the San Francisco State University School of Cinema. Great is also an Independent Spirit Award-nominated filmmaker and a leading authority on race and popular culture. His most recent book is The Black Pack: Comedy, Race, & Resistance (Rutgers University Press, 2025).

featuring

Alan Miller, Essex Hemphill, Blackberri, Brian Freeman,

Tongues Untied is about the silence that envelops the lives of Black gay men. This exhilarating work is a loquacious attempt to break free of the homophobia and racism that mute the possibilities for human fulfillment. Marlon Riggs creates a poetic pastiche that has the emotional uplift of gospel music and the sobering impact of reportage. The words of gay poets, personal testimony, rap tableaux, dramatic sequences, and archival footage are woven together with a seductive palette of video effects. Riggs dares to speak the words that could conjure a life into being: “Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.” 

Steve Seid

FILM DETAILS

Screenwriter

  • Marlon Riggs
  • Joseph Beam
  • Chris Harris
  • Reginald Jackson
  • Steve Langley
  • Alan Miller
  • Donald Woods

Cinematographer

  • Marlon Riggs

Print Info

  • Color
  • DCP
  • 55 mins

Source

  • Frameline Distribution

Preceded By

The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement

Gail Dolgin, Robin Fryday, United States, 2011

This Oscar-nominated short follows an eighty-five-year-old African American veteran of the Civil Rights Movement as Barack Obama is elected president.

FILM DETAILS

Print Info

  • Color
  • Digital
  • 25 mins
source
  • Gail Dolgin

Event Accessibility

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Learn more about accessibility services at BAMPFA.