In Praise of Langston Hughes

Looking for Langston is a short 1989 film made by Black gay filmmaker Isaac Julien.
It's a memoriam to Langston Hughes, an Afro-American writer and poet who lived
from 1902 to 1967. He was a main figure in Afro-American culture in a movement
that was called the Harlem Renaissance, a group of writers, painters and poets of the 1920's.
Featured in the film are some readings by the likes of James Baldwin, Essex Hemphill
and Bruce Nugent.
Sadly the artists of the Harlem renaissance dissolved towards the end of the 1920's
and were no longer in vogue, having been rejected by the main art establishment. 
And many of the Black artists went hungry.
Although it is widely accepted that Langston Hughes was gay, it wasn't something that
he openly talked about.

Filmmaker Isaac Julian made his film in 1989 just at the very time that many 
gay men succumbed to the killer disease AIDS. And over 27,000 people died 
from it in that very year, including some of the cast from Julien's film.

Isaac Julien is a central figure in British visual culture as well as Black British cultural
studies and queer independent cinema, and has been so over the last two decades.

Looking for Langston is clearly a career highlight for him and he regularly shows his
large prints and stills from the film, showing them off in many art galleries, even
fetching quite a hefty amount in sales for the actual prints.

The film features a really beautiful collection of Black men as you can see in some
of the above gifs I made. And the haunting Jazz and Blues score is also quite captivating.


Below: An image from one of the gallery shows.
Over 30 beautiful prints can be seen HERE   (Victoria Miro - Gallery - London 2017)

Above: Remembering two of the film's main leading actors
Ben Ellison (left) and Matthew Baidoo (right) who we lost
shortly after the film was released.
They both succumbed to that terrible outbreak of AIDS
in the late 1980's.

Below: A short clip from Isaac Julian's 'Looking For Langston.'

Kindly uploaded to Youtube

by Artomo Sardanaple.