Marlon Riggs: Freaky Free

With supporting material, this group session aims to tackle the influence of Western privilege on desire and the power dynamics of love relationships – particularly those involving partners of different ethnicities and social backgrounds. An opportunity to ask if love/desire can evade exclusion and in turn offer the possibility to re-engineer our conflicting selves by generating (new) (messier) narratives…

In the form of an open forum, participants will be invited to share experiences and discuss desire through the lens of identity politics to question what makes Western privilege attractive.

Please note the workshop will centre on QTIPOC perspectives.

With respect to their personal experiences, participants must be aware that some of the content and questions raised during the session may be triggering for them.

In this short performative lecture, BFI Flare programmer and writer Jay Bernard will present on the work of Marlon Riggs and the poetics of black queer politics. Using photos, film stills and audio, the piece will look closely at a world that is heavily influenced by language and ask: in the age of hashtags, memes, online activism, multi-issue protests confronting state violence in all its forms, and a renewed call for genuine structural change, how does language operate? How does it shift and change? And what is its world-making potential? From protest chants, to the poetic power of #blacklivesmatter UK, and from the black British arts movement to the work of Riggs himself, The Sound and the State will be an incisive appreciation of black queer language and culture.

A curriculum for the dance floor bringing together music, spoken word and moving image. This iteration of the work previews a new radio play This Catalogue of Poses, which follows four figures at a spectral house club night and is framed by the histories of queer nightlife in the local area. This hybrid performance/lecture/DJ set is part of Ifekoya’s ongoing project A Score, A Groove, A Phantom which investigates archives of blackness, sociality and inheritance as they diffract through queer nightlife and trauma in the present moment.

There will be space to listen, space to dance and space to reflect. Come with an open mind.

Marlon Riggs’ final film jumps into the middle of explosive debates over Black identity.

Using his grandmother’s gumbo as a metaphor for the rich diversity of Black identities, his camera follows Black folks young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight, grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contested definitions of Blackness.

Riggs’ own urgent quest for self-definition and community, as a Black gay man dying from AIDS, ties the multiple perspectives together. Hooked up to an IV in his hospital bed, Riggs takes strength for his struggle against AIDS from the continual resilience of the African Americans in the face of overwhelming oppression. As his death nears, he conjures up the image of a Black community nurturing and celebrating the difference and creativity in each one of us.

This screening will be introduced by activist and performer Twiggy Pucci Garçon.

Affirmations (1990) is an exploration of Black gay male desires and dreams, starting with an affectionate, humorous confessional and moving on to a wish for empowerment and incorporation.

Anthem (1991) is Marlon Riggs’ experimental music video politicizing the homoeroticism of African-American men. With images–sensual, sexual and defiant–and words intended to provoke, Anthem reasserts the “self-evident right” to life and liberty in an era of pervasive anti-gay, anti-Black backlash and hysterical cultural repression.

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret) (1993) features a series of interviews with HIV-positive black men. Through music, poetry and quiet – at times chilling – self-disclosure, five seropositive black, gay men speak of their individual confrontations with AIDS, illuminating the difficult journey African-American men make in coping with the personal and social devastation of the epidemic.

This screening will be introduced by Conal McStravick, a London-based artist with a research interest in AIDS crisis video and video activism.

The seminal documentary on Black gay life, Marlon Riggs’ self-proclaimed “coming out” film uses poetry, personal testimony, rap and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others), to describe the homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men.

The film weaves together stories of homophobia and racism: a man refused entry to a gay bar because of his colour; a college student left bleeding on the sidewalk after a gay-bashing; the loneliness and isolation of the drag queen. Yet they also affirm the black gay male experience: protest marches, smoky bars, “snap diva”, humorous “musicology” and Vogue dancers.

Tongues Untied will be introduced by writer and director Topher Campbell.