In June 2020, Americans already responding to a life-altering pandemic were forced to confront another reality: the unjust murder of George Floyd. As people took to the streets in protest, right as Pride Month preparations were underway, many were forced to acknowledge the myriad ways in which Black and queer liberation have always been intertwined.
Movies depicting this intersection, however, have been few and far between. Although films about the queer experience have popped up in droves in recent years, most have centered on white protagonists; conversely, movies about the Black experience have overwhelmingly featured heterosexual leads.
So, this Black History Month, why not check out some films about queer Black individuals? And while I could recommend classics of the genre, like the Oscar-winning Moonlight or the Sundance sensation Paris Is Burning, I’d much rather recommend several underseen titles — each of which not only spotlight queer Black characters, but also speak to experiences that are specific to those of us who occupy both identities at once.
From a time-loop film about a young closeted boy trying to come out to his parents on the same day he keeps being murdered by police to an eye-opening documentary about one of the civil rights movement’s most influential voices, whose contributions have largely been erased because of his queer identity, these seven films are as informative as they are entertaining.
When you think about the Civil Rights era, who comes to mind first? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Rosa Parks? Malcolm X? Langston Hughes? While all these people certainly deserve recognition, there’s one name that has consistently been missing from the high school U.S. history books for decades: Bayard Rustin. Widely referred to as “The Unknown Hero” of the Civil Rights Movement, Rustin played a pivotal role in its progression and expansion, serving as a mentor to Dr. King and others, and even organizing the historical 1963 March on Washington.
But Rustin also lived his life as an openly gay man, an honorable decision that made his placement in the wider movement rather precarious. Despite his incomparable contributions, this hero, who studied Gandhi’s nonviolent civil resistance in India, was deemed too controversial to be a public face. Nevertheless, Rustin kept working behind the scenes.
Released 16 years after his death, Brother Outsider offers a fascinating look at the life of this illustrious, woefully under-discussed figure. Through archival footage, interviews with his contemporaries, and some recordings of Rustin himself, this award-winning documentary premiered to universal acclaim at Sundance 2003 and remains essential viewing.
Back in 2017, Netflix released David France’s The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a documentary about the legendary New York trans figure largely regarded as one of the leading minds behind the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Upon its release, Tourmaline, the activist, artist, and filmmaker behind Happy Birthday, Marsha!, released a statement about the project, accusing its director of shamelessly stealing decades’ worth of her personal archival research — an especially heinous act given Tourmaline’s own identity as a Black trans woman, and France’s as a wealthy white man with access and plentiful opportunities to tell other stories.
The existence of Netflix’s documentary made it near impossible for Tourmaline to follow through with her own plans to direct a documentary about Johnson. But thankfully, Happy Birthday, Marsha!, the fictional short film Tourmaline wrote and directed alongside her collaborator Sasha Wortzel, offers a far interesting take on Marsha’s life, as it imagines what the activist was doing in the hours leading up to the Stonewall Riots.
Reframing an often tragic story through a lens of celebration, community-building, and mutual caring, Happy Birthday feels uplifting even when delving into dark topics. Fronted by Mya Taylor just a couple years after she broke out with Tangerine, Tourmaline’s film is a testament to trans power, both past and present.
One of my favorite queer films of 2020, The Obtiuary of Tunde Johnson tells the story of Tunde, a wealthy, Nigerian high school senior who, on the day he decides to come out as gay to his parents, dies at the hands of the police. Adopting a time-loop narrative structure à la Groundhog Day, every time Tunde dies, he reawakes in bed, forced to start the day anew — until he inevitably has another run-in with the cops, rebooting the entire process all over again. While I am generally leery about the importance of coming-out narratives in our modern-day landscape, when more people are coming out at increasingly early ages, I admire Tunde Johnson for its dedication to challenging that traditional structure to tell a story that’s impressively complex.
For Tunde’s titular character, coming out is the least of his problems when so many other dangers are lurking right around the corner. Throughout the film, Tunde encounters any number of impassés: there’s the constant threat of the police, of course, but also the microaggressions he faces while trying to convince his closeted white boyfriend to come out to his conservative father. Written by rising screenwriter Stanley Kalu and directed by first-time feature helmer Ali LeRoi, The Obituary of Tunde Johnson is a provocative film that only gets better with each viewing.
Several years before she made history as the first Black woman to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay thanks to her work on Netflix’s Mudbound, openly lesbian director Dee Rees broke out with the thrilling one-two punch of Pariah and Bessie, two different films about the queer Black female experience.
Pariah, her feature debut, tells the story of Alike, a young Black teenager caught between her strict closeted home life and the freedom she feels expressing herself as a butch lesbian when she’s out with friends. Anchored by a career-making lead performance from Adepero Oduye with sensitively rendered writing and direction from Rees, Pariah’s exploration of Black attitudes towards queer identity leads to some thoughtful criticism about how we understand intersectionality, without feeling judgmental.
Bessie, her follow-up, stars Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith, who is widely considered the most famous blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. Tracking Smith’s trajectory from a young abused child to the superstar singer known as the “Empress of the Blues,” the film is both an inspirational tale about the power of perseverance and a cautionary one about the difficulties talented performers face because of their skin color. Though many of these difficulties were Black vs. white, they are perhaps most strikingly illustrated through the complex relationship between Smith and fellow bisexual singer Ma Rainey (played here by Oscar winner Mo’Nique, years before Viola Davis would be nominated for an Oscar for playing the same role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), which evolves from a mentor-mentee partnership to a chilling rivalry when it becomes clear that there isn’t enough space for two Black women to lead a genre.
The winner of four Emmys (including Outstanding Television Movie) and a Screen Actors Guild Award (for Queen Latifah’s lead performance), Bessie is a biopic worthy of its subject.
There’s something deliberately elusive about the central relationship in Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, Passing. Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, the film follows two light-skinned Black women living on opposite sides of the color line during the Harlem Renaissance. After running into each other in an all-whites establishment, Irene (Tessa Thompson), who lives as a Black woman, and Clare (Ruth Negga, in the biggest Oscar snub of 2022), who has been living as white, slowly begin to rekindle their high school friendship, with the unfulfilled Clare gradually encroaching on Irene’s seemingly more colorful life, full of Black culture and political activism.
On the surface, the central tension between the women seems to be about race, exclusively. Because Clare’s choice to pass has afforded her a life of luxury, her exploration of Irene’s world can’t help but take on a slightly eerie air of voyeurism and cultural tourism. But on a deeper level, Clare’s attraction to Irene’s world seems to extend beyond its trappings to Irene herself. Clare both admires and envies what she perceives as Irene’s comfort in her own identity, adding an undeniable sense of lusty desire to the proceedings.
In this reading, Clare is not only forced to confront her own history of racial deception, but also her complex sexual attraction, which she has similarly stifled to fit into a world not designed to cater to women with her bloodline. Presented in lush black-and-white, Passing is a challenging but rewarding look at queerness, Blackness, truth, and fiction, featuring two phenomenal performances from both leads.
Even in 2022, films about lesbian women — particularly Black lesbian women — are few and far between. Which is perhaps why it’s so shocking to think that The Watermelon Woman somehow came together over 25 years ago, way back in 1996. Directed by Cheryl Dunye, the fictional film acts as a meta-commentary about the lack of information available about the Black lesbian community. Centered on aspiring filmmaker Cheryl (played by Dunye), the film follows her as she tries to make a documentary about the titular subject, a Black woman who, after playing a mammy character in a 1930s drama, was credited simply as “The Watermelon Woman.”
In her efforts to uncover information about this mysterious figure, Cheryl slowly finds herself immersed in a world of conflicting accounts about her history. The Watermelon Woman, as we come to find out, was a lesbian herself, known for her singing and widely believed to be in a relationship with the white director of the 1930s film Cheryl first saw her in. Certain elements of the Woman’s story begin to mirror Cheryl’s own, and soon, the director is working through her own insecurities as much as she is untangling the Woman’s identity.
Exploring issues of interracial desire, fetishism, the closet, homophobia, and the dangers of erasure, The Watermelon Woman is an enduring classic whose mere existence — even today — still feels like a miracle.
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