Tongues Untied (1989) review

Semi-autobiographical "call to action" by experimental documentarian Riggs where he talks about growing up gay in the American South, shows off "snapping" techniques (which I'm not sure are still used), discusses societal problems with both homophobia and the AIDS crisis and then urges all homosexual African-American men to be proud of who they are.  While this is coming from a personal place for the director (who lost his own life to the virus in 1994) and his righteous defiance is commendable, this is very unfocused considering it runs under an hour in length, as if he had a bundle of ideas he wanted to cover and couldn't quite manage to present them in a less scattershot manner ... and although the poems are okay, there are simply too many of them.  I watched this for the first time in 2024, which (I think) is a more tolerant world than it was in the late eighties (take note of the clip from the Eddie Murphy special) ... yet there are parts of the globe that regard same-sex relations as a crime punishable by death.  If Riggs were around today, I'm certain he would be livid.