Marlon Riggs
American filmmaker (1957–1994)
Marlon Troy Riggs (February 3, 1957 – April 5, 1994) was an American filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment, and Black Is... Black Ain't. Being Black and gay, his films examine past and present representations of race and sexuality in the United States. The Marlon Riggs Collection is open to the public at Stanford University Libraries.
Early life
Riggs was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on February 3, 1957. He was a child of civilian employees of the military and spent a great deal of his childhood traveling. He lived in Texas and Georgia before moving to West Germany at the age of 11 with his family. He was the son of Jean (mother) and Alvin Riggs (father) and also had a sibling named Sascha.
Later in his life, Riggs recalled the ostracism and name-calling that he experienced at Hephzibah Junior High School in Hephzibah, Georgia.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marlon Riggs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.