The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs

“Marlon Riggs. Could get emotional thinking about it. Tongues Untied, that film changed me. It changed me because his approach, their approach to the filmmaking, the film, it's theatrical, it's visceral, it's evocative. There's like this snap section that's super important. But a film that challenges expression, freedom of expression. This film is important to me because I got to watch multifaceted Black men express the nuance of being a Black queer man, and for it to be expressed in movement and dance. The sound design is actually insane. I wonder who, I got to find out who, who, how, when, where, how they did that, but they did that. And there's so much more to unpack. See, that's the thing, you unpack new, new shit.”

“Just last year we did a retrospect- a full retrospective of Marlon Riggs at the Instituto Moreira Salles in Brazil where I am a programmer. And it was kind of sad when we sent back the files, and I'm happy that I now can invite some friends over and show them some of his films and videos.”

“Now, as a Black queer filmmaker, I must say we have few mentors, few people's work that we can look up to, to find ourselves in, to, even speak to, to figure out who we are as filmmakers, and I was fortunate enough to meet and speak with and be encouraged by Marlon Riggs, and they have the Marlon Riggs collection here. When he passed, he left a lot behind, and he left most importantly, his work behind for us, and this is a collection of his work, and it's always so hard to find, it really is always so hard to find streaming or anywhere, and it's here in the collection, so, I'm going to take that, and I would say you should take that, and find it here and add it to your collection because there's very few, again, Black queer makers', work, as so important as Marlon. Had to take a breather on that one.”

“Let's see here, The Signifyin' Works of Marlon Riggs. "There has never been a filmmaker like Marlon Riggs, an unapologetic gay Black man who defied a culture of silence and shame to speak his truth." I'll absolutely be checking that out, that sounds great.”

“Here's another one for y'all, Marlon Riggs.”