Our Iconic Queer Ancestors: Marlon Riggs

Black gay poet Marlon Riggs was a revolutionary artist, scholar, activist, filmmaker, and educator. His bold style, merging documentary with performance, poetry, and experimental techniques, left indelible marks on each of the intersecting histories of queer, independent, documentary and Black cinemas. 

In this class, we’ll watch the entire body of Riggs’ work. Produced across his brief but impactful career, his films are powerful rejections of shame, from celebrating and interrogating Blackness in its multitudes, especially his Black gay community, to confronting racism in the queer world, to grieving and processing the impact of AIDS on his communities and his own body. 

Films:

2/5: LONG TRAIN RUNNING: A HISTORY OF THE OAKLAND BLUES (29 minutes, 1982); ETHNIC NOTIONS (56 minutes, 1987)

2/12: TONGUES UNTIED (55 minutes, 1989); AFFIRMATIONS (10 minutes, 1990); ANTHEM (8 minutes, 1991)

2/19: COLOR ADJUSTMENT (87 minutes, 1991)

2/26: NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN (38 minutes, 1992); BLACK IS…BLACK AIN’T (86 minutes, 1995)

This class will be taught by Max Swanson, a filmmaker, performance artist, writer, curator and educator based in Portland. Max is passionate about creating spaces that connect our innate curiosity & creativity, through our love of cinema, to our collective healing, pleasure, and liberation.

Enrollment is limited to 18 students.

Email us at education@moviemadness.org if you have any questions.