This video essay, modeled in part after the choreopoem and mixtape forms of the 70s and 80s respectively, uses Marlon Riggs' award-winning documentary Tongues Untied as a jumping off point to explore LGBT life, love, and character in the twenty-first century. Created twenty years after the Stonewall uprising, Riggs' experimental video has since inspired a new generation of black artists and activists to assert their beautiful, revolutionary selves. Tongues UNITED constructs a poetic opus out of seemingly disparate, crowd-sourced audio, video and photography (taken by LGBT folk and straight allies). The multi-modal nature of Tongues UNITED speaks to the evolution and variegation of the LGBT community.
This project is dedicated to the memory of Marlon Riggs who, on February 3, 2011, would have turned 54 years old.
Phillip Howze contributed his video Tongues UNITED to the WGBH Lab open call for videos about the gay rights movement. Watch a trailer to Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied.
