With their series “Pride at Maysles” amplifying and celebrating Queer Black culture, perception, and perspective, Harlem’s Maysles Documentary Center reprises the Homo-Harlem film festival I ran here 15 years ago with funding from State Senator Bill Perkins.
Much like colorism, in response to compounded biases, engenders a kind of double consciousness, so does being Back and LGBTQ+. Everyday racism and marginalization is more than enough to combat without the added demonization of homophobia. This conundrum was hauntingly dramatized last week, when I attended a screening of three Marlon Riggs movies. I saw his impassioned quest for love and self-realization in “Affirmations,” made in 1990; the experimental 1991 music short “Anthem,” and from two years earlier, the elegiac feature film, “Tongues Untied,” where I have a cameo.
Giving voice and visibility to a hereto largely invisible Queer Black community, this last most ambitious offering had premiered 45 years ago on PBS, albeit at 11 p.m. A post-screening panel, including Dr. Kathryn T. Hall, Dr. Jafari Allen, and Steven G. Fullwood led a thoughtful discussion exploring the paradox of gaining recognition while simultaneously being hidden, and other issues of a Black gay pursuit of DEI. Audience members were so engrossed that the Q&A ran over time.
Michael Henry Adams photo
Steven G. Fullwood is co-director of the Nomadic Archivists Project, and former assistant curator, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center. He was the founder and project director of the In the Life Archive Project, formerly known as the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive, which was donated to the Schomburg Center in 2004. 
Jafari Sinclaire Allen is professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS) at Columbia University, where he is the director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS), and editor-in-chief of “Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Society, and Culture.” 
Moderator Nia Whitmal, Maysles Center director of special projects and Cornell University anthropology PhD candidate 
Dr. Kathryn T. Hall, PhD, MPH is the assistant professor of medicine, part time, at Harvard Medical School and associate molecular biologist in the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Hall is the author of “Placebos” (MIT Press) and has a masters in documentary film from Emerson College.
This auspicious start was followed on Sunday, June 8 by the 35th anniversary showing of Jennie Livingston’s by now iconic, “Paris is Burning.” Who would believe before Elegance Barton’s “Pier Kids,” Patrik Ian-Polk’s “Punks” or Kirk Shannon-Butts’ “Blueprint,” that a white chick would document the 1980s drag scene on location in Harlem and the West Village in her 1990 chronicle?
By way of an appetizer, Nikolai Ursin’s 1967 short “Behind Every Good Man” gave an intimate glimpse of the life of an African American trans woman, two years prior to New York’s historic Stonewall rebellion, demanding equal rights for LGBTQ+ residents.
The best is yet to come! On Friday, June 13 from 7-10:30 p.m., Pride at Maysles presents: Dawn Porter’s “Luther: Never Too Much,” completed just last year. With specialty drinks and music by DJ A²z, the post-screening party is sure to be an appropriately festive climax. Further events are as follows:
Saturday, June 14, 2025 7-9 p.m.
Pride at Maysles continues with three short films from Cheryl Dunye: “Janine” (1990) recounts the story of a Black lesbian’s relationship with an upper-class white high schooler; “She Don’t Fade” (1991) is an hilarious, reflection of a young Black lesbian; and “The Potluck and the Passion” (1993) portrays potential racial, sexual, and political conflagration, averted, at a lesbian potluck super.
Saturday June 15, 7:-10:30 p.m.
The programming only gets better still. In “The World Before Me” (2022), Cass Arrington traces inter-generational experiences growing up queer. So does Thomas Allen Harris in “Vintage: Families of Value” (1995), an imaginative experimental documentary where queer siblings, including the filmmaker and his brother, artist Lyle Ashton Harris, compellingly investigate their own complex family histories.
Post-screening, insights from the director, Cass Arrington, and yours truly will be followed by a celebration of the 30th anniversary of “Vintage: Families of Value.” There will also be a pop-up exhibition of Harris’ House of Haizlip.
Wednesday, June 18, 7-9 p.m.
“Holding Back the Tide,” made by Emily Packer in 2023, is a poetic meditation on New York’s oysters transforming waterways even in the face of their own uncertain future. Ms. Packer herself will lead a post-screening conversation.
Wednesday, June 25 , 7-9:30 p.m.
Pride at Maysles will show “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” (2023). A collaboration between Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, the film examines the revolutionary life and work of the innovative activist poet, from the sixties’ Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter and today’s DEI wars; a purposeful journey further illuminated by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson in an in-person discussion after the show.
June 2025’s Pride at Maysles is co-curated by Nia Whitmal, Kazembe Balagun, Vanguard DocMaker Students, Thomas Allen Harris, Sonnet Carter, and Darah Martin.
Established by the late luminary documentarian Albert Maysles and his wife Gillian Walker when they moved to Harlem 20 years ago, Maysles Documentary Center is a Harlem-based nonprofit organization committed to community, education, and documentary film. They employ filmmaking to expand the universe and opportunities of underrepresented artists and narratives, while empowering young filmmakers in creative self-expression, communicating ideas, and advocating action.
Maysles Documentary Center is located at 343 Lenox Avenue, New York, NY 10027, (646)-853-1296. For more info, visit www.maysles.org