A night of mixed-media experimental films blending documentary, poetry, and dance to explore intersections of queer identity. Featuring shorts from the 2025 PREHEAT Screendance Festival followed by the pioneering 1989 video art essay TONGUES UNTIED. Presented with Ashwell Texas.

The vitals:
Friday, June 20
7:00 ~ Doors
7:30 ~ PREHEAT FEST short films
7:40 ~ Q&A with local filmmakers AJ Flores and Sanchita Sharma
7:50 ~ TONGUES UNTIED

At a lean 55 minutes, TONGUES UNTIED (1989) is an explosive and groundbreaking piece of video art history. Director Marlon Riggs and poets Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam perform spoken word about Black gay life intercut with VHS clips of gay life from loud homophobic preachers to louder music, politics, and dance. Sprinkle in some tutorials on how to snap like a diva and you have the most interesting publicly funded hours of television to ever air on PBS.

Hyperreal is pairing with the PREHEAT Screendance Festival to present Riggs’ pioneering video essay with three PREHEAT experimental screendance shorts: The Ends, #NotGoingNowhere by AJ Flores, and Helium by Sanchita Sharma.

–Louise Ho

SEE YOU AT THE MOVIES
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