Q-MOC: The Queer Movies of Color List

I had a horrendous opportunity to watch perhaps the most tiresome, offensive, boring film on queer issues and immigration anyone will ever make -- Maple Palm. The film is not even worthy of the B-Movie, Cult, Schlock, Ironic interest of hipsters and other pests. It is a pedantic, quasi-pornographic argument for gay marriage via immigration. Afterwards, one of my friends argued that the film demonstrated the cultural effects of oppression and lamented the way queer people have not produced a great body of cinema. Happily, I told her, this is simply not true. My top ten film list includes a number of films by queer folk. She retorted, "yeah, but they're probably all by white men." Again, happily for both of us, she was wrong. And so from that conversation, I produced the Q-MOC (Queer Movies of Color) list. This is a list of my favorite films made by queer people of color.

This is my list. Some are classic. Some are docs. Some are shorts. Some are experimental. Some have bigger budgets. Some don't. These are movies I think people should see for various reasons. I weighed in entertainment value, historical importance, diversity of theme, genre and style--as far as I know, all directors identify as queer and as people of color.

Amazing cinema made by queer people of color suffers from bad/underfunded distribution, an industry happy to minimize its public exposure, in some cases government harassment (Tongues Untied), and in others limitations of chosen genre (first person, experimental shorts like LEGACY, SURVIVING SABU, and EL DIABLO EN LA PIEL). Nonetheless, these films represent some of the most interesting trends in film and video in the last 30 years. Not all of these works are easy, none are hollywood fluff, most aren't even "indy" fluff.

Coming up with this list was tricky. I decided to omit many great films--I would be happy with a list dominated by Isaac Julien, Ximena Cuevas, or Gregg Araki because their works speak strongly to me. Avoiding repeating the same directors over and over, I made a rule of one-title per director.

I hope you like this list.

Happy viewing,
xo,
CPR


1) LOOKING FOR LANGSTON Isaac Julien

2) WATERMELON WOMAN Cheryl Dunye

3) MYSTERIOUS SKIN Gregg Araki

4) TONGUES UNTIED Marlon Riggs

5) HAPPY TOGETHER Wong Kar Wai

6) LOLLIPOP Kallup Linzy

7) EL DIABLO EN LA PIEL, Ximena Cuevas

8) SURVIVING SABU Ian Iqbal Rashid

9) DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST Julie Dash

10) LEGACY, Inge Blackman