Marlon Riggs - Nominee

"My struggle has allowed me to transcend that sense of shame and stigma identified with my being a Black gay man. Having come through the fire, they can't touch me."

- Marlon Riggs

Riggs first rose to prominence as the director, producer and writer of Ethnic Notions (1987), an Emmy Award-winning documentary that explored the effects of African-American stereotypes. Reviewing the accomplishments of his life, the then 31-year old filmmaker decided it was time to stop, as he described it, “extracting out sexuality” from his work. The result was the ground-breaking documentary Tongues Untied (1989) which, along with Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston (1988), was one of the first widely viewed films to examine black gay sexuality from a black point of view. Although Tongues Untied met with wide-spread critical acclaim, it drew fire from conservative politicians when it was broadcast on American public television. In the ensuing controversy, Riggs became one of the best-known and most outspoken black gay male activists. His death from an AIDS-related illness in 1994 came prior to completion of his final work, Black Is... Black Ain't, a film which explored self-hatred, racism, sexism and homophobia within the African-American community.