Program Description
Event Details
Tongues Untied: Juneteenth & 35th Anniversary Screening
Made, in director Marlon Riggs’ own words, to “shatter this nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” Tongues Untied is a bold and beautiful film centering the experiences of Black gay men and Black gay love and desire. In the 1990s, it met with a firestorm of controversy that reached all the way to the U.S. Congress. A radical act of representation, it has lost none of its life-affirming resonance.
In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
San Francisco based film curator Cornelius Moore who appears in Tongues Untied will introduce the film virtually.
The San Diego Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will be in attendance and offer secular blessings.
Marlon T. Riggs (1957–1994) was an award-winning filmmaker, educator, poet, gay rights activist, and insightful thinker on identity, politics, censorship, cultural memory, African American culture, and documentary film practice. Besides Tongues Untied, he produced, wrote, and directed several other documentary films including Ethnic Notions, Color Adjustment, and Black Is... Black Ain't. The Marlon Riggs Collection is open to the public at Stanford University Libraries.
Cornelius Moore is a friend and professional colleague of late director Marlon Riggs. He’s the co-director of California Newsreel, a film distribution and production company focusing on health equity, Black American history and culture, and African cinema. He’s a sought-after freelance film curator and programmer specializing in the film and media works of filmmakers of African descent throughout the world.
Picture This features free film screenings every Monday at 6:00 pm in the Central Library's Neil Morgan Auditorium. Check back here, on the library calendar, for the most up-to-date lineup of films.
Underground parking can be accessed from 11th Ave and is free for 2 hours with validation. The Central Library is also conveniently located along the Blue and Orange trolley lines, between the Park/Market and 12th/Imperial trolley stops. Bus route 11 stops in front of the library.