Tongues Untied is a 1989 American experimental documentary film directed by Marlon T. Riggs, and featuring Riggs, Essex Hemphill and Brian Freeman. The film seeks, in its author's words to, "...shatter the nation's brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference." In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Content The film blends documentary footage with personal account and poetry in an attempt to depict the specificity of Black gay identity. The "silence" referred to throughout the film is that of Black gay men, who are unable to express themselves because of the prejudices of white and black heterosexual society, as well as the white gay society. Riggs brings awareness to the issues Black gay men face. They are excluded from gay communities because these communities are white-centered and fail to understand the intersecting identities of race and sexuality. Riggs experienced this in San Francisco, California within the Castro District, in which he states, "I was immersed in vanilla" and witnessed the absence of the Black gay image. In addition, Riggs gives examples of media in which black men are hypersexualized for white sexual pleasure and racistly portrayed Black individuals. Black gay men are placed in a divide because their voices are excluded from these LGBTQIA+ communities, but their bodies are sexualized for white viewing pleasure. Furthermore, Black men are supposed to represent hyper-masculinity, and when Black gay men associate with homosexuality, they are seen as being weak. With their gay identity, however, a Black man is expected to be both hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine. These are the stereotypes and stigmas that oppress black gay men. Within their Black communities, black homophobia is also present. Riggs displays footage of church leaders preaching that gay relationships are an abomination and black political activists who consider being black and gay to be a conflict of loyalties. The narrative structure of Tongues Untied is both interesting and unconventional. Besides including documentary footage detailing North American Black gay culture, Riggs also tells of his own experiences as a gay man. These include the realization of his sexual identity and of coping with the deaths of many of his friends to AIDS. Other elements within the film include footage of the Civil Rights Movement and clips of Eddie Murphy performing a homophobic stand-up routine. The documentary