Black Pride on film at Maysles Documentary Center

With their series “Pride at Maysles” amplifying and celebrating Queer Black culture, perception, and perspective, Harlem's Maysles Documentary Center reprises the Homo-Harlem film festival I ran here 15 years ago with funding from State Senator Bill Perkins.

- By MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS

Much like colorism, in response to compounded biases, engenders a kind of double consciousness, so does being Back and LGBTQ+. Everyday racism and marginalization are more than enough to combat without the added demonization of homophobia. This conundrum was hauntingly dramatized last week, when I attended a screening of three Marlon Riggs movies. I saw his impassioned quest for love and self-realization in “Affirmations,” made in 1990; the experimental 1991 music short “Anthem,” and from two years earlier, the elegiac feature film, “Tongues Untied,” where I have a cameo.

Giving voice and visibility to a hereto largely invisible Queer Black community, this last most ambitious offering had premiered 45 years ago on PBS, albeit at 11 p.m. A post-screening panel, including Dr. Kathryn T. Hall, Dr. Jafari Allen, and Steven G. Fullwood, led a thoughtful discussion exploring the paradox of gaining recognition while simultaneously being hidden, and other issues of a Black gay pursuit of DEI. Audience members were so engrossed that the Q&A ran over time.