Film

Tongues Untied

Name: Tongues Untied
Genre: Documentary
Released: 1990
Cast: Marlon Riggs, Essex Hemphill, Brian Freeman, Michael Bell, Willi Ninja

Marlon Riggs's landmark documentary celebrates Black gay desire and community as resistance. It's lyrical and funny, moving between poetry, testimony, dance and deliberate camp—a film that refuses the mournful tone expected of AIDS-era queer work. Made for anyone who wants to understand a specific moment in Black gay life, or who needs to see joy treated as a radical act.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a personal, poetic documentary where essay, spoken word, dance floor joy and sharp comedy braid together into one defiant argument about being Black and gay.

Skip it if you need a conventional, narrated documentary with a clear linear structure, since this one hops between voices, poems, performance and comic riffs and rarely settles in one place for long.

What it asks of you: It runs a brisk 55 minutes but asks you to keep up with fragmentary collage, switching between intimate testimony, recited verse and playful set pieces without much warning.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Paris Is Burning1991

Jennie Livingston's documentary of New York's Black and Latino ballroom scene captures the same exuberant self-creation and community survival through performance. It's urgent, alive, and utterly its own thing.

But The ballroom world can feel alien if you're unfamiliar with the codes and hierarchies. Some moments are very hard to watch.

Looking2014

HBO's series about gay life in San Francisco inherited Tongues Untied's insistence that Black queer men deserve complexity and interiority. It's quieter, but the DNA is there.

But It took six seasons to deepen beyond handsome men with problems. Some find the pacing meditative to the point of frustration.

The Watermelon Heist2003

Rodney Evans's documentary (made by one of Tongues Untied's participants) traces the lineage of Black queer cinema directly back to Riggs. It's a love letter and a reckoning.

But Lower budget means less slick; it asks patient attention rather than commanding it.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Tongues Untied

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Last Year at Marienbad1961

Both films reject straightforward narration in favor of formal complexity to convey interior truth. Both trust style and repetition to communicate what speech cannot.

Alain Resnais's experimental film uses fragmented narrative, repetition, and formal play—the same documentary techniques Riggs would use a generation later to capture memory and desire. Formal ancestor.

But It's deliberately opaque and refuses conventional plot. Many experience it as tedious rather than illuminating.

How to Survive a Plague2012

David France's documentary about ACT UP captures the rage and grief of the same era Tongues Untied addresses, but through activism and resistance. Essential counterpoint.

But It's harrowing. The accumulation of loss is relentless and by design.

Courage Under Fire1996

Deepa Mehta's film about two women in a marriage discovering each other is from a different continent but the same emotional language—desire as transgression, intimacy as defiance.

But The film was banned and controversial; some found it too restrained, others too bold. It polarizes.

We Are Family2017

Iyore Emmanuel Wewezda's documentary sits in the archive with Tongues Untied, showing contemporary Black queer families building kinship outside blood and state. Direct spiritual descendant.

But Very low-profile; you'll have to hunt for it and it's rarely available widely.

Brother to Brother2004

Roger Deakins's narrative film follows an aging Harlem Renaissance figure and a homeless queer teenager. It's a conversation between eras, between Riggs's world and the present.

But The narrative structure is sometimes clunky and it reaches for poetry without always landing it.

The Fits2016

Anna Rose Holmer's film about a girl entering a competitive dance team captures that same ecstatic physicality and community belonging that Tongues Untied celebrates through movement.

But It's abstract and deliberately oblique. Viewers expecting conventional narrative logic will bounce off it.

Moonlight2016

Barry Jenkins's film is the quieter heir to Tongues Untied—three chapters in a Black gay man's life, rendered with visual poetry and deep emotional truth.

But It moves slowly and asks you to find meaning in silences. Some experience this as profound; others find it frustrating.

Black Mother2018

Both films refuse the documentary form that expects explanation or apology. Both say: we exist, we are beautiful, watch us.

Khalik Allah's documentary essay on Blackness filmed in Harlem is purely visual poetry—no interviews, no score, just rhythm and presence. Spiritual sibling to Tongues Untied's commitment to Black self-determination.

But There is no conventional narrative. It's a sensory and emotional experience that demands you meet it halfway.