As a gay black man, filmmaker Marlon Riggs (who died of AIDS in 1994 at the age of 37) was doubly marginalized, although this did not stop the Harvard-educated director from speaking out about and constantly questioning the meaning of both blackness and black queer life. After graduating magna cum laude, Riggs followed up at the UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he was drawn to documentary filmmaking using the videotape format.
The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs collects all seven films that Riggs made (as well as his 1981 student film Long Train Running: The Story of the Oakland Blues), beginning with Ethnic Notions (1986), which traces the history of black popular culture figures—Jim Crow, Zip Coon, Sambo, the Mammy, the pickaninny—in early media, exploring their underlying messages that black people were ugly, savage, happy servants, lazy, etc. Narrated by Esther Rolle, the film draws on historical stills, film footage, songs, and gift shop curios to argue that the shameful legacy of these pervasive racial stereotypes was the systematic political and social repression of black Americans.
Although the PBS-aired Ethnic Notions was a bold and challenging documentary, the filmmaking style was mostly conventional. Riggs’ next film, Tongues Untied (1989), represented a startling departure, mixing personal stories, poetry, music, dance, and experimental filmmaking to both explore and defiantly champion black gay life. Part of PBS's acclaimed “P.O.V.” series, the documentary featured male nudity, raw language, and the first-ever American TV kiss between two men (the internet falsely credits a 2000 episode of Dawson’s Creek).
Some PBS stations refused to show the film, which also set off a right-wing firestorm as figures including presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and homophobic Senator Jesse Helms decried the use of National Endowment for the Arts money to fund the documentary (the grant was for $5,000).
A collaboration between Riggs and poet Essex Hemphill, Tongues Untied sounded an angry and painful note about the treatment of the black gay community (by both whites and blacks), but also featured touching and humorous insights (as well as a hilarious sequence with a bona fide snap diva and a group of snap connoisseurs).
Riggs’ next two films were the shorts Affirmations (1990) and Anthem (1991), the first made from outtakes of interviews from Tongues Untied, while the second was an experimental music video.
Riggs then picked up the historical portrayal of African Americans begun in Ethnic Notions with Color Adjustment (1992), which turns a penetrating eye on prime-time TV. Narrated by Ruby Dee, the documentary is divided into two parts: “Color Blind TV (1948-68)” and “Coloring the Dream (1968-)." Interviews with a wide variety of thespians, producers, social critics, and psychiatrists (Henry Louis Gates Jr., Esther Rolle, Norman Lear, Diahann Carroll, etc.) mixed with clips from TV shows (Amos n' Andy, All in the Family, Julia, I Spy, Good Times, Roots, The Cosby Show, and others) chronicle the rocky road that blacks have traveled across the cathode ray tube. Riggs deftly uses the medium to criticize the medium, as clips seen in the frame of a TV set abruptly switches to news footage of civil rights battles on the streets of the South, mapping the gap that existed between the TV version and the reality of race relations in America.
At this point HIV-positive himself, Riggs’ next film, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret) (1993), combined poetry, music, and interviews with five black HIV-positive men, who talk about early shame, coming out, fear, anger, and ultimately pride in being who they are. Initially, the camera only shows us the lips and eyes of these men, the rest of the screen blacked out as if to protect their identities, before eventually and dramatically revealing the full faces as their voices gain confidence.
Made while he was dying and completed posthumously by his collaborators, Riggs’ final film, Black Is…Black Ain’t (1995) is a deeply personal but also historically wide-ranging documentary that uses the melting pot metaphor (specifically, Riggs’ grandmother’s mouth-watering-looking gumbo) to celebrate blackness while also forcefully arguing against reductionist definitions that attempt to pigeonhole black life. Pointing out that the black church was both a positive (offering support) and negative (condemning gay and lesbian blacks) influence, the film also casts a critical, questioning eye on the pluses and minuses of various movements, from the rise of Black Power in the late 1960s (which was heavily focused on black males, whose attitudes towards black women could be just as patriarchal as those in white culture) to cultural traditions that mythologized Africa’s past (as interviewee Angela Davis notes, she’s happy to wear kente cloth, but she also wants to feel free to slip into a pair of jeans).
Once again employing poetry, dance, music, and personal narrative—including scenes of a hospital-bed-bound Riggs offering advice and instructions on completing the film—Black Is…Black Ain’t is a grand summation of the themes that drove Riggs’ life and work, ending with a plea for unity within the black community—a big tent unity that recognizes contradiction while also accepting widespread diversity.
Presented with high definition transfers of all of the films, The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs also features extras including four new programs with editor Christiane Badgley; performers Brian Freeman, Reginald T. Jackson, and Bill T. Jones; filmmakers Cheryl Dunye and Rodney Evans; poet Jericho Brown; film and media scholar Racquel Gates; and sociologist Herman Gray.
Additionally, a 2020 introduction to Riggs features filmmakers Vivian Kleiman and Shikeith, and Ashley Clark, curatorial director of the Criterion Collection, while Karen Everett’s 1996 documentary I Shall Not Be Removed: The Life of Marlon Riggs includes interviews with Riggs, Kleiman, filmmaker Isaac Julien, African American studies scholar Barbara Christian, several of Riggs’s longtime friends and collaborators, and members of his family. Finally, the set features a booklet with an essay by film critic K. Austin Collins.
An important compilation of the work of an incredible filmmaker whose tragically short, brilliant career gave us challenging films that continue to educate and entertain, this is highly recommended. Editor’s Choice.