5 Black Queer Films To Urgently See & Naked Acts

How do we visualize unmet desires? Celebrate the textures of what hasn’t been seen on screen? Use cinema as a tool to contemplate the totality of queer lives? Those are the questions at the heart of these five films I’m listing below in celebration of Pride Month. Transcending the rigidity of film form, labels, and status quo, the films listed showcase the entanglement of pleasure, politics, and desire that make these queer films a particularly delightful viewing for all. The selections below– with films directed by Suzan-Lori Parks & Cheryl Dunye– are focused on works you may be haven’t seen. 

 If you’re looking for even more films to see? I wrote at length on the 1989 “Looking for Langston” and other queer films in 2022:

Anemone Me (1990) dir. Suzan-Lori Parks & Bruce Hainley

Co-written and co-directed by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, “Anemone Me” centers a blind Black boy bodybuilder (Fred Anderson) that falls in love with a merman (Peter Hermann) that washes up ashore. Director Todd Haynes serves as an assistant director on this Christine Vachon-produced film. 

Valerie (1975) dir. Joseph Horning

Film as a living document of life gains new meaning with this intimate portrayal of Valerie, trans sex worker turned housewife, who defines herself—her dreams, her history, her lived experiences, her work, her love, and her desires—  for herself.

Ife (1993) dir. H. Lenn Keller

“My name is Ife, I came here from Paris one year ago and heard San Francisco is a very gay city” opens the 1993 short about a young lesbian hoping to make her mark in one of the queer capitals of the world as long as the mark doesn’t lead to love.

Vintage: Families of Value (1995) dir. Thomas Allen Harris 

One of the earliest manifestations of love is the mirror image of yourself as reflected in your family’s portrait of you. In Thomas Allen Harris’s “Vintage: Families of Value” the director puts a tender lens on himself and two other Black families coming to terms with members of their unit being queer.

Janine (1990) dir. Cheryl Dunye

“I always wanted to be more” Dunye says to the camera in the confessional documentary, bearing her heart, as she journeys through her school-aged attraction to a wealthy, white girl.

All the films can be viewed on Black Film Archive here.

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A still from Naked Acts (1996). The film stars Jake-Ann Jones, Ron Cephas Jones, and Renee Cox

+Some news: Tonight at BAM Cinema in Brooklyn, “Naked Acts” (1996) has its 4K restoration premiere.¹ This moment comes 1.5 years after I first sent a DM to director Bridgett M. Davis in awe after seeing her sole feature film in an archive and scribbled in my research notebook, “What do I need to do to get this distributed?” I soon showed the film to Milestone Films and a week later the contracts were signed to distribute it. And now, tonight, 30 years after production first began, the film premieres with distribution for the first time. (You can hear how it happened from Bridgett’s perspective in Roger Ebert.)

In my estimation, “Naked Acts,” is the most important Black woman’s film discovery since "Losing Ground.” Richard Brody from the New Yorker writes in his recent review that the rediscovery expands film history, saying:

Davis’s film, made at a time when there were few Black women filmmakers, exalts the hard-won breakthrough of self-depiction, of controlling the means of production; it opens pathways to a future cinema more radical than itself.

It remains a great gift to serve Black films and filmmakers. I’ve been proud to serve as a creative consultant for this release from discovery to distribution and I sincerely hope you’ll join me at the cinema to check out “Naked Acts.” All showtimes, now and in the future, can be viewed here. I will keep you all updated as the film is available to stream and makes its way to DVD/Blu-Ray.

NEW YORK 
Friday, June 14 - Thursday, June 24 
Brooklyn Academy of Music 
Q&A after the 7pm screenings on the 14th & 15th with Bridgett Davis 
 

LOS ANGELES 
June 18, 20, and 22 
American Cinematheque @ Los Feliz 3
 

AUSTIN, TX 
June 19 and 24 
Austin Film Society 
 

SEATTLE, WA 
June 20-23, June 26-27 
Northwest Film Forum 
 

1. I’ll be in conversation with Bridgett at 7 p.m., she will also be in conversation tomorrow with the BAM cinema programmer Jesse Trussell.