A night of mixed-media experimental films blending documentary, poetry, and dance to explore intersections of identity. Featuring shorts from the 2025 PREHEAT Screendance Festival followed by the pioneering 1989 video essay on Black gay life, TONGUES UNTIED.

The vitals:
Friday, June 20
7:00 ~ Doors
7:30 ~ TONGUES UNTIED + PREHEAT FEST short films

TONGUES UNTIED is non-linear video essay in which filmmaker Marlon Riggs and poets Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam share personal accounts and poetry about navigating Black and gay identities in 1980s America. This unconventional art film blends documentary footage of homophobic preachers and gay cruising, vogueing, spoken word, tutorials on the many different ways to snap, and other video ephemera into a moving portrait of racism, homophobia, exclusion, anger, and solidarity. 

Hyperreal is pairing with the PREHEAT Screendance Festival to present Riggs’ pioneering video essay alongside three contemporary mixed-media shorts. These shorts unite music, movement, and documentary to explore themes of community, identity, expression, and resistance. Explore the fertile intersection of dance and film from London to Austin, Texas in an evening that will expand your perception of the art of film.

–Louise Ho

SEE YOU AT THE MOVIES
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