Copied without permission from San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1994, pg. E1

"Marlon Riggs -- A Voice Stilled: Oakland-based film maker was a tough,
eloquent advocate"
by Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Critic

Brilliantly articulate, fearless in the face of his enemies, Marlon Riggs
was a bright flame in the world of documentary film -- a consummate artist
who brought a clear, distinctive voice to his work, and challenged us to
see our world in new ways.

Riggs, the Oakalnd-based writer and video maker who died yesterday at 37
following a five-year battled with AIDS, leaves a body of documentary films
remarkable for their eloquence, their boldness and their passionate demand
for a democratic, inclusive American culture.

His first important work, "Ethnic Notions" (1987), surveyed 150 years of
racial stereotyping in popular culture. "Tongues Untied" (1988), his
best-known, most personal and controvesial work, was a homoerotic riff on
black gay men in American society, told with poetry, dance and music.

"Color Adjustment" (1989), winner of the prestigious George Foster Peabody
Award, looked at the ways in which African Americans have been depicted in
prime-time television -- from "Amos 'n' Andy" to "Roots" and "The Cosby
Show."

"Marlon tuaght us to hear many voices," said Vivian Kleiman, his
co-producer on the film "Color Adjustment." "He didn't believe that we
should all speak with an eloquent, mellifluous, standardized PBS voice --
but rather that we each find our individual voice, rooted in the specifics
of personal experience."

"He was multi-voiced," added Essex Hemphill, a Philadelphia poet whose
words were used in "Tongues Untied." "Sometimes an artist will focus on one
particular aspect of his or her experience, and that will be the primary
force of their lifelong work. Marlon's gift was his ability to weave
together so many disparate elements and aspects of himself into his work."

Even as a child, Keiman said, Riggs showed leadership abilities. "He was
something of a child preacher. When he was a kid at church he would often
be asked to get up and discuss the scripture, and I think that the sense of
leadership and speaking to large groups was something he was comfortable
with, and film is a logical extension of that."

"From very early on, he was very much an intellectual," said Riggs' mother,
Jean, who spent the last four months with her ailing son.

"He did all the things that other kids do, but he talked very early, walked
very early and read very early. He seemed always to be very wise."

Riggs was also a born fighter.

In 1992, when Patrick Buchanan campaigned for the Republican presidential
nomination, he stole clips from "Tongues Untied" that depicted gay men
dancing at the Folsom Street Fair.

Shuffling the clips out of context, Buchanan inserted them in TV spots
accusing the Bush administration and the National Endowment for the Arts of
abusing government funds. ("Tongues Untied" received a $5,000 NEA grant, a
small percentage of the film's total budget.)

Riggs fired back, charging his demagogic foe with copyright infringement
and ripping him to shreds in a New York Times op-ed piece. "Because my film
affirms the lives and dignity of black gay men," he wrote, "conservatives
have found it a convenient target."

'A New Poison'
With attacks like Buchanan's, Riggs added, "presidential politics have thus
been injected with a new poison: The persecution of racial and sexual
difference is fast becoming the litmus test of true Republican leadership."

Riggs' passion for inclusion extended to his work style. "Marlon listened
to everyone," Kleiman said. "He was a very dynamic, flexible, considerate
person -- clear in what he wanted and envisioned, but at the same time not
defensive. When we were doing post-production on 'Color Adjustment,' he
would ask for feedback from everyone -- including the video technician we
worked with, and the person delivering lunch that day."

"He's certainly one of the few people I've known who could have been anyone
he wanted to be," said film editor Deborah Hoffman, a collaborator on
"Ethnic Notions" and "Color Adjustment." "I think he had a mission, which
was to communicate and to bridge the gap between the white and black
communities, the male and female communities and the straight and gay
communities."

Even in the context of work, however, Riggs could cut loose. "There was his
academic side and his wild side, and both siders were there every day,"
Hoffmann said. "One minute he was this dry academic using billion-dollar
words, and the next minute he'd be dancing down the hallway."

Best known for his film and video work, Riggs was also a powerful writer
and dynamic performer. Three years ago, he participated in an Oakland
poetry reading of black gay men, and astonished his fans by reciting a poem
he had written -- a fierce sexual fantasia about a black man's encounter
with a white racist skinhead.

It is Riggs' documentaries, however, that form his greatest legacy.

"I believe that Marlon's work -- all his explorations of racism and gender
and difference -- will live on for quite a long time," Hemphill said. "And
yet that doesn't compensate for the losss. As with anyone who's gone out of
here as a result of AIDS, you can't imagine what else he might have given,
had he lived longer in the full capacity of his facilities."

"He could take poetry and turn it into evocative work that speaks in such a
heartfelt way to gay black men and a larger audience," said Brian Freeman,
an actor and co-producer on "Tongues Untied." "All of his work really
challenges the craft of video-making ... His contribution in advancing the
art is enormous."

Toll on Film Making
Riggs' death follows the passing of another prominent gay film maker,
England's Derek Jarman, who died of AIDS on February 19. He also joins
scores of film makers who have succumbed to the AIDS epidemic in the last
decade, among them British director Tony Richardson ("Tom Jones"), Colin
Higgins ("9 to 5"), Emile Ardolino ("Dirty Dancing"), as well as San
Francisco's Curt mcDowell ("Thundercrack"), New York film makers Arthur J.
Bressan, Jr. ("Buddies") and Bill Sherwood ("Parting Glances") and France's
Cyrill Collard ("Savage Nights").