Looking For Langston & Tongues Untied: 35th Anniversary Double-Bill

Join NewFest for this landmark double bill celebrating the 35th anniversary of two groundbreaking works of Black queer male identity, expression, and catharsis.

Looking for Langston

Directed by Isaac Julien (1989)
45min, digital
With Ben Ellison, Matthew Baidoo, Akim Mogaji

In Looking for Langston, a self-described meditation on the life of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes addresses the possible, possibly imagined, life of the author as a gay man. Both documentary and fantasy, Isaac Julien’s groundbreaking portrait blends archival footage with black-and-white paeans to a life that might have been—a Harlem nightclub from the 1920s, a London nightspot from the late 80s, various dream sequences—foregrounding gay sexual desire, constructed of a mélange of materials. Looking for Langston exists at competing narrative lines as documentary, reclamation of an aspect of Black history, rumination on the AIDS crisis, and enduring work of pure imagination.

Tongues Untied

Directed by Marlon Riggs (1989)
55min, digital
With Riggs, Michael Bell, Kerrigan Black

At the height of the AIDS crisis, Marlon Riggs made Tongues Untied, a necessary and highly influential documentary about being Black and gay in America. Using poetry, slang, and—most amusingly—snap language (look it up), Riggs captures the desire, rage, desperation, and joy of Black gay men. For more than 35 years this film has been formative, explaining clearly and artistically what the world expects of queer men of color. It is powerful, political, and incendiary, but, above all, this beautiful film shows how we can make sense of the world by finding acceptance and joy within ourselves.