Film’s Silent Erasure of the Gay Black Man

The absence of audio is positioned suitably for dramatic moments, triggered by dark questions in which a black gay man considers his own erasure from society: “What future lies in our silence?” (Essex Hemphill, Tongues Untied). Along with making the screen cut to black in these sustained periods of time, Marlon Riggs gives the audience time to pause and think about the content he is presenting. This attributes an interpretative property to his documentary, experimenting with the self-referential aspects of the genre for the viewer, producing a cut-off from an almost inhumane reality.