Black Is... Black Ain't.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

In the nearly fifteen since the death of black filmmaker Marlon Riggs, a whole lot has happened in and to America -- most remarkably the election of a mixed-race President -- an event about which Riggs would have been immensely pleased, I think. Probably best known, at least in gay circles, for his documentary Tongues Untied, Riggs died of AIDS-related causes while making his final film, Black Is...Black Ain't, which strikes me as the superior work due to its immense reach and enormous humanity. Released to coincide with last month's' Black History week, the movie should find a lot of new, young fans, while proving a rich trove of memory and deeper meaning for those who've already seen it.

Early on in the documentary, the filmmaker says that AIDS forces its hosts to take a look around at life and each other -- and to communicate. Communication and community are what Riggs was always after, and he explores these with little preaching but a lot of love and inclusion. In his search for black identity, he covers the many names (from Negro to African, colored people to Black) and shades (mulatto, intermediate, Creole). A lot of history is covered here, and so, too, are the nurturing, strong mothers and the fathers who acknowledge neither pain nor vulnerability and as a consequence are mostly silent. (And silence, as AIDS taught us, equals death.) Riggs' movie is certainly of its time, and yet the time warp we experience makes the film more moving and -- ironically -- timely, too. The manner in which the filmmaker combines history with his own memories is often surprising, and always resonates.

Music, all kinds, gets its fair share of coverage, as does the strange "African" city in South Carolina that insists on its own form of identity as the "real" one. Riggs will have none of this, and one of the blessings of his film is how he gives all comers their due. (Angela Davis is one of his particularly intelligent and thoughtful interviews.)

The Church is both heralded for its help and indicted for the way in which it has purposefully excluded gay black men. Whatever your "bag," as we used to say, you'll easily be able to apply much that's shown here to your own situation. Gays, lesbians, women, Jews, any "outsider" group (and isn't every group occasionally the outsider, depending on time and place?) should be able to identify and profit from Riggs' 87-minute achievement.

The end credits even supply a recipe for some good gumbo.