I strongly want to recommend two movies I got to see as part of the awesome queer film series organized by Catch Fire contributor Todd Sekuler and Aykan Safoğlu in conjunction with the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition at c/o Berlin (more here) and that really impressed me. Both “Tongues Untied” and “Looking For Langston” were shown in the section “Racialized and gendered bodies”, since they both deal with questions of black gay identity and sexuality in their very own special way. What they share is their attempt to make black gay culture and life visible, using very unconventional and associative forms of narration, both working a lot with poetry and texts of black poets such as Essex Hemphill (both) and Bruce Nugent (Looking For Langston).

“Tongues Untied” was released in 1989 and is a semi-documentary reflection on the status of black men and transgender people within the gay community of the late eighties by director, writer and activist Marlon Riggs. The film depics the Riggs experiences as a gay man in a very creative, unique way and adresses questions of racism, inequality and HIV/AIDS while showing a lot of footage of black gay culture of the time.

“Looking For Langston”, also from 1989, is director Issac Julien’s tribute to American poet and writer Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement of the New York of the 20s and 30s. The film isn’t really a biography, but a beautiful, sensual contemplation on Hughes live in the 20s, his sexuality and his desires as a gay man, while at the same time trying to reflect the desires of black gay men in a more general way.

You can order “Tongues Untied” via Frameline and “Looking For Langston” via the British Film Institute.