Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien, 1989, 45 min.)

Co-presented with Poets House

Shot in sumptuous monochrome, Looking for Langston is a lyrical exploration - and recreation - of the private world of poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) and his fellow black artists and writers who formed the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. Directed by Julien while he was a member of Sankofa Film and Video Collective, and assisted by the film critic and curator Mark Nash, who worked on the original archival and film research, the 1989 film is a landmark in the exploration of artistic expression, the nature of desire and the reciprocity of the gaze, and would become the hallmark of what B. Ruby Rich named New Queer Cinema. Looking for Langston is also regarded as a touchstone for African-American Studies and has been taught widely in North American universities, colleges and art schools for nearly 30 years. --Isaac Julien Studio

This program, part of Made In Harlem: Remembering the Renaissance explores the literary legacies of Langston Hughes, as well as lesser known black poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Panelists will discuss their own poetry and scholarly work, Langston Hughes’s body of work, Julien's cinematic representation of poetry and desire, collective remembering, and the long-lasting influence of Renaissance poetry on the Harlem of today.

Post-screening panel discussion with Zohra Saed and LaTasha Diggs, moderated by Paolo Javier.

This is a FREE event, which will be live streamed on the Poets House Twitter on April 24 then posted online. The film begins at 4PM and the live-stream panel discussion will immediately follow. You can RSVP for Free for an email reminder on the day of the event!

Zohra Saed is a Brooklyn based Afghan American poet. She is the co-editor of One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature (University of Arkansas Press), editor of Langston Hughes: Poems, Photos, and Notebooks from Turkestan (Lost & Found, The CUNY Poetics Documents Initiative); and Woman. Hand/Pen. (Belladonna Chaplet). Her essays on the Central Asian diaspora have appeared in Eating Asian America (NYU Press) and The Asian American Literary Review. She co-founded UpSet Press, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit indie press, with poet Robert Booras. Zohra is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Bard Early College, Queens.

A writer, vocalist and sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale.  As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented literary and musical events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem. 

Paolo Javier was born in the Philippines and grew up in Las Piñas, Metro Manila; Katonah, New York; Cairo, Egypt; and Vancouver, British Columbia. He earned his BFA from the University of British Columbia, working as a freelance journalist and running an experimental theater company before returning to New York City, where he still lives with his family. He earned an MFA and MAT from Bard College. Javier’s collections of poetry include The Feeling Is Actual (2011); 60 lv bo(e)mbs (2005); the time at the end of this writing (2004), recipient of a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award; and Court of the Dragon (2015), which Publisher’s Weekly called “a linguistic time machine.” He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Queens Council on the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. For more than ten years, he edited and published the experimental art and poetry journal 2nd Avenue Poetry. From 2010 to 2014, Javier was poet laureate of Queens, New York.

This program is part of Made In Harlem: Remembering The Renaissance
February – June 2020
Made In Harlem: Remembering The Renaissance, on the occasion of the Harlem Renaissance’s landmark 100th anniversary uses the wide-ranging lens of documentary film to capture and commemorate, explore and expand the many layers of experience that made up--and continue to make up--the Harlem Renaissance. The series brings together a variety of mostly nonfictional film sources to examine visual representations of the Renaissance and the lasting influence of these representations on political and artistic output, collective memory, present-day black experiences, and the Harlem of today.

This series is supported by the West Harlem Development Corporation.