Anthem is less a conventional music video than a political valedictory. Produced and directed by Marlon T. Riggs in 1991, the eight‑minute short stitches together erotic imagery, poetry and activist iconography — including ACT UP’s pink triangle and the slogan “Silence=Death” — as an explicit plea for solidarity with people dying of AIDS. By the time he made Anthem Riggs was himself living with an AIDS diagnosis; the film’s repeated images of memorial candles, the phrase "a holy procession of dying," and its anguished refrains are intentionally autobiographical and urgent. Riggs assembled voices and faces from the black queer arts community — poets Essex Hemphill, Reginald Jackson, Steve Langley, Colin Robinson and Donald Woods, and singer Blackberri — and superimposed their verses and bodies on patriotic motifs (the American flag) and Pan‑African symbolism to force a confrontation with both homophobia in Black America and the catastrophic human cost of the epidemic.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1990s
Marlon T. Riggs Made Anthem While Dying of AIDS — a Defiant, Grieving Testament Released in 1991
Anthem (film) / Marlon T. Riggs / 1990s
Anthem is less a conventional music video than a political valedictory. Produced and directed by Marlon T. Riggs in 1991, the eight‑minute short stitches together erotic imagery, poetry and activist iconography — including ACT UP’s pink triangle and the slogan “Silence=Death” — as an explicit plea for solidarity with people dying of AIDS. By the time he made Anthem Riggs was himself living with an AIDS diagnosis; the film’s repeated images of memorial candles, the phrase "a holy procession of dying," and its anguished refrains are intentionally autobiographical and urgent. Riggs assembled voices and faces from the black queer arts community — poets Essex Hemphill, Reginald Jackson, Steve Langley, Colin Robinson and Donald Woods, and singer Blackberri — and superimposed their verses and bodies on patriotic motifs (the American flag) and Pan‑African symbolism to force a confrontation with both homophobia in Black America and the catastrophic human cost of the epidemic.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.