All language subtitles for Isaac Julien - Looking for Langston Commentary(1988)

(Air-raid siren wails)

TONI MORRISON: "..we may be, indeed..."

NINA KELLGREN:
I always find this first voiceover,

the Toni Morrison one, so powerful, so moving.

- Yeah.
- How did that happen?

ISAAC JULIEN:
Toni Morrison's voiceover happened

because I went to James Baldwin's funeral,

so that's why we have that
in the beginning of the film.

In a sense, it was one of the main reasons
for making the piece of work.

And just before that, there was that train
on the bridge, that we reproduce tater.

Yes, the train on the bridge
is meant to be a metaphor for the blues,

because when African-Americans first started
to emigrate from the South to the North,

quite a lot of the men used to use the train,

and the train became a son of symbol
in the blues for...

being able to actually move from the South
to the North,

to an area of liberation, so to speak.

It symbolises that voyage.

Do you want to say anything
about you in the box? (Laughs)

That was meant to be two things: It was meant
to be a pun, in the Barthesian sense,

in terms of the death of the author.

The other was obviously a relationship being
made between the question of mourning -

and, really, at that particular time,
I did attend just so many funerals,

so many friends of mine were dying

that one was intrigued about
what one would look like in a coffin,

because it would be the kind of image
you would never get to see yourself, of course.

And so there was that son of idea, if you like.

This is into our crane shot,

our vertical transition between two spaces,

which in your original script
you had as a lateral,

going between two rooms.

But then we found this location

and t got the grip into see if it would take
the weight of the crane on the interior.

We found a place where we could do this
vertically, which was much better, wasn't it?

Yes. That was one of the things that's very
exciting about the role of locations in the film,

and this location being really centrally important
to the whole look of the film.

Yeah, very important location.

Isaac and I, and Derek Brown, the production
designer, looked at quite a few locations

before we settled on this one.

It gave us so much gorgeous potential
for black-and-white lighting.

It's a very architectural space,

full of iron balustrades, railings, columns.

t think both Derek and t thought
it was a fantastic space

to work with Isaac's idea, with the script,

and with the images that were being seen -
black-and-white photographs.

ANNOUNCER:
In Memoriam - Langston Hughes.

A blending of memories, tributes
and his own words.

(Moving train)

♪ Blues

"Sun's a-settin'."

ISAAC: In this archival sequence

Langston Hughes is reciting
the Ballad Of The Fortune Teller.

He used to do this thing where he used to recite
his poetry with a jazz quartet.

In fact, his poetry and syntax
was very much emulating jazz and blues,

and so this also became one of the reasons

why we used a son of jazz/blues soundtrack
for the actual film.

I was just looking at that tracking shot
from the record player to Langston's face -

or actor who stands in for Langston Hughes -

and that beautiful over-exposure
at some points

and out-of-focusness that you could never
ever get on a digital medium.

That is pure black-and-white film at its best.

♪ Blues singing

♪ You love this music

♪ God knows, we love this music too

♪ My man's got a heart like a rock...

ISAAC: Here we have Bessie Smith
in St Louis Blues,

which is ostensibly the first rock promo
that was made.

This is a film which we found
at the Museum of Modern An,

and we were able to use this as a son of
intertextual reference

in relationship to trying to think about the blues,

because the blues was the first expression
really where we can hear, as it were,

the articulation of a queer desire.

Later on in the film you'll hear Sissy Man Blues

and another song called Freakish Man Blues,

and all of these songs are articulating questions
around sexuality or sexual issues,

which are trying to describe the different kind
of sexual relations which are taking place,

in that particular time,

so the blues and song were very important.

In fact, the song Blues For Langston

and the soundtrack existed 18 months before
any of the film was shot.

When we were shooting the film,

we were also using the music to help us
construct the pacing of the tracking shots.

We'd listen to it on set or on location
to get the right feet,

because the feet of the pace of the track

obviously has to really work with
that soundtrack.

ANNOUNCER:
A friend of Bruce Nugent,

a friend of Alain Locke,
a friend of Wallace Thurman,

admired for their intelligence and their art.

Were they seeking the approval of their race?

Or of the black middle class
and the white literary establishment?

(Typewriter taps)

Langston Hughes wrote:

"The ordinary negro
hadn't heard of the Renaissance,

and if they had,
it hadn't raised their wages any."

Baraka said: "Harlem was vicious..."

ISAAC: In this tracking shot,
you've got the Van der Zee photograph

then "Fire" is the letter
which has been written by Wallace Thurman,

so this is the Wallace Thurman character,

and imagining him being in his apartment.

There we have Countee Cullen's
On These I Stand,

his book of poems.

"..Even if it was a widely shared one."

(Police siren)

♪ Blues piano

NINA: Now we're back on the crane,
everyone 's frozen, as if in a still photograph.

But we're moving, the camera's moving.
And the smoke is moving.

Smokes used as almost a sculptural element
in this. It's not atmos smoke.

I think one of the things about the relationship

between photography
and the moving image and stillness,

which was one of the other things
which we were thinking a lot about,

was really trying to evoke a play between
both the still and moving image,

and obviously in relationship to
the question of memory,

and I think this whole idea of evoking a mood
that would emulate a particular time,

and, at the same time,
create this subterranean world,

where, basically, we are in a speakeasy.

The speakeasy
which is being constructed here

would be one of the sons of bars that perhaps
one would have gone to in Harlem

in the Twenties and the Thirties.

But, obviously, in this film,
it's very much about the mythic,

and it's very much about trying to not really
construct anything to do with a reality,

but really a phantasmatic
or stylised son of space.

I think this idea of fantasy,

and trying to construct a space
to articulate desire, is really very important.

♪ Freakish Man Blues

♪ You mix ink with water

♪ Bound to turn it black

♪ You run around with funny people

♪ You get a streak of it up your back

♪ There was a time when I was alone

♪ My freakish ways to see

♪ There was a time when I was alone

♪ My freakish ways to see

♪ But they're so common now

♪ You get one every day in the week

♪ Had a strange feelin' this morning...

ISAAC: The song that's being sung behind
is Freakish Man Blues.

So this is also probably one of the first
blues songs which have been recorded

that is actually articulating this question
of a black, bisexual, gay desire,

so there are all these intertextual references.

It's not just a song that is a blues song.

It's a song that has a very specific
and historical reference.

Each still in Looking For Langston,
or moving frame in the film,

could be a pictorial photograph.

I think the question of pictorialism
is very important in the piece.

I think this particular shot,

which is the parody of a quite famous
George Platt Lynes photograph,

is an interesting one for us to really discuss.

In it, what I was interested in doing
was to try to parody the shot,

but then to do something else with that as well.

So it's, in a way,
bringing photographs to life.

That's enhanced by the tracking shot,

but also by the lighting, which is different.

- In a way, it's improved.
(Nina laughs)

We also just shifted its meaning, in a way,
as well,

towards something else that you wanted to do.

We've got some stills of Isaac and l
sitting on the bed discussing this shot,

looking at the original and talking about
the changes that we were going to make.

At some other point,
you can just see that stilt photograph

and compare the lighting on the body,

particularly if you look at that very first long,
slow track along the body,

which is really, really gorgeous,

and the way the tight models that body
on the bed, and then took at the original.

We did something else with it.

And the bed itself - a different choice
by the production designer and Isaac,

which gives it a different meaning.

There's a moving light in the background,
the gaffer needed a candle.

We used a particular gobo that she produced.

Everything is slightly shifting,

so you're never in a fixed, known,
absolutely known, space.

We 're not saying this is a particular room.

All the time we're taking you out into a, kind of,
an emotional area, really.

I think, also, one of the other things

was really trying to think about
the different racial representations in it as well.

In the George Platt Lynes photographs

all the subjects are white.

I think there's also this idea of trying to insert,
as it were, other representations,

specifically black, gay representations,
in their place.

In a way, this parodying is very much central
in the making of the film.

Robert Mapplethorpe was also another
influence in the film,

and we're thinking about that

in relationship to trying to not fetishise
a black body in the same son of way,

to create a sensuous representation
that perhaps has a softer edge to it

than the one which Mapplethorpe would give.

Nonetheless, I think Mapplethorpe is also
someone that we're very much thinking about

when making the piece of work,
and making the images.

"His eyes wandered on past
the muscular hocks to the firm thighs...

...the rounded buttocks, then the...

NINA: We 're out in the salt marshes
at this point in the film.

...and broad, deep chest."

ISAAC: I think one of things that's amazing
is this crane shot,

which we have the photograph here
of you preparing.

There is a small technical story to this shot.

When we recced it, the tide was out.

The tide obviously doesnt come in this far
because it's a salt marsh,

but the water comes up underneath the land.

When we recced it, the tide was out,
so it was dry and firm.

Picked a spot for the crane, we've come back
and, of course, the tide 's in and it's soft.

We did find another equally good place
for the crane.

That's one of the things you learn as a DP.
(Laughs)

"..he became confused."

But the reveal's great,
and you're just on the surface,

and then you come up and there are these
beautiful pools going away.

Also, the poem which is being read
through this sequence

is a poem called Smoke, Lilies And Jade,

which was written by Bruce Nugent.

And it's the first black, queer text
to appear in a literary journal.

It appeared in Fire.

One of the things about this text really was that
it was so controversial when it was written

that there was a protest made by a number
of black bourgeois intelligentsia against it.

The thing that's very interesting for me was that
we, again, had this quite interesting text

that we didn't want to literally represent.

And so the flatness of the marsh goes against
the pictorial, florid iconography in that poem.

"He flushed warm with shame.

Or was it shame?

His pulse was hammering
from wrist to fingertip.

Beauty's lips touched his.

His temples throbbed.

Beauty's breath came short now."

NINA: Just looking at the kiss, as well,
I slowed that down in the camera.

You don't really read it as slow motion,

but it gives it a weight and a heaviness
and a sensuality that I think really helps.

(Both laugh)

And then we have this shot here
which is really the classic shot.

It was the shot which was used for
the poster campaign of the film

when it first was released in Berlin in 1989.

Also it's, in the iconic sense,

one of the images which were used
when the film was released.

Again, it's a parody
of a George Platt Lynes photograph.

It's actually one of the only photographs
where he has a black subject

coupled with a white subject.

In this translation of it

I have two black subjects.

That said, they're quite light-skinned

and that was also one of the issues

which came up as a debate

at the time when it was made.

Of course, this debate very much
is connected to the question of class

and the kind of society that one's depicting,

where, basically,
the question of class and caste

is really centrally implicated in who is an artist
and who isn't.

♪ Jazzy piano

"He said: Put no difference into your tone
when you speak of his name.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Let my name be spoken without effect.

Without the ghost of shadow on it."

♪ Blues

ISAAC: This is one of the tracking shots
that I was very excited about

when we were making the film,

because it's a track which we laid
across the whole room.

It was a tracking shot
which was surveying the whole space,

and in it we have images of James Baldwin,

images of Langston Hughes,

and then you have this son of, if you like,
very languid exploration of the space.

And then, of course, we have the refrain
of the Blues For Langston song as well.

But I thought that in this shot
we really achieved something

in relationship to thinking about
the use of long tracking shots,

and also the use of choreography.

That's one of the real aspects
which is really important

into the way that the film was made,

that we're thinking about trying to link
quite long tracking shots,

which would, in a way,
give the space in the film

for there to be a sort of meditation
that could be performed.

If we look at some transitions in the film,
like the one I've just seen,

shadow is enormously important.

That whole way of keeping the flow going,

and moving shots that go into one another,
fade into each other, or cut into one another.

ll helps the audience really hear,
or really listen to, a soundtrack.

In this sequence we're very much thinking
about the play between light and dark.

It begins with this tracking shot
at the gasometers in King's Cross,

which was shot at dusk,

waiting for a particular sort of light.

Again, there's the use of a tracking shot,

where it's tracking forward
and then backtracking.

Again, the light here's quite hard.

It's hard for a particular reason

in relationship to trying to think about
the question of shadowing.

This is the point in the cemetery
where we lost the main tights.

We were basically left with one sun gun,
which is a handheld, battery-operated lamp.

But if you shift that lamp,
again it reveals depth.

S0 you can actually even use just one lamp
to create some feeling,

as the light picks up and reveals things.

It does great things.

"Above or below, a man.

This is our heat."

ISAAC: I remember in this shot where,
basically,

at one point we were saying
that there wasn't enough light.

We were really pushed!

I really wanted it to be very dark.

That was really very important-

that darkness would be a feature.

I think particularly in this tracking shot here

where you're not able to quite make out
what son of space you're in,

and then the reveal,

is very much part of trying to reconstruct
or create a spatial kind of displacement

within the image,

which you can do in black and white.

Very important in the film.

"We don't have to say, 'I love you.'

The dark swallows it,

and sighs like we sigh."

Also, I was very nervous
about shooting in the cemetery,

because I was very worried about
the implications of what one was trying to...

in a way, equate the question of desire
and death, if you like, simultaneously,

and I was very worried about it
perhaps being too literal,

or sending the wrong ideological message.

And it was very interesting to think about how...

again, the black-and-white photography
and the tracking shots

gave a completely opposite picture, or picturing,
to these scenes,

then trying to think about shots where you don't
want too many things to actually happen

within the shot itself-

quite simple gestures and actions.

Yeah, 'cos the soundtrack so rich,

you don't want too much going on
in the image at that particular point.

"..destroy it from within.

But the disillusioned,

those who've lost the stardust,
the moondance, the waterfront,

like them, I long for my past.

When I was ten, thirteen, twenty...

...l wanted candy,

five dollars a ride."

Classic, classic film noir shot.

♪ Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho, ohh

♪ Come on, look at me

♪ Beautiful black man...

I feel I should talk a little bit in this sequence
about Blackberri,

the musician who has composed
and is singing this song.

I first heard this song actually in a conference
in 1986, in Los Angeles.

And I met Blackberri,

who was this black, gay musician
and performer.

And...as soon as I heard this song,

I knew that I wanted this song to be in the film.

And, very fortunately for me,
he was coming to London,

and we recorded this live in a studio,

with a jazz quartet.

And the jazz quartet included...

...Julian Joseph, who's actually
quite a famous jazz musician now.

♪ They want two pictures, did they want three?

♪ I know it's hard, but sometimes we must...

And one of the things about this scene,

is that I wanted to try to construct a space

that would be able to replicate some of the
issues which were being sung in the song,

and at the same time
try to relate that historically.

So there's a clip from Ten Minutes To Live,

a film by Oscar Micheaux,

and then this is an archive of negro artists.

It was, in a way, a film that was trying to show

that some positive developments
were taking place.

♪ You're beautiful

♪ You've got a beautiful face

♪ I'm saying you're beautifu-u-ul...

You could say it was like a propaganda film,
in fact,

that was being made during the Thirties,
during the Depression,

to try to show a different son of picture.

But all of these occasions
are quite famous moments

in African-American history,

in terms of the black ans.

They're all very well-known painters,

and artists that appear in the actual film.

NARRATOR: By the end of the Twenties,
negroes were no longer in vogue.

Patrons found other uses for their money.

Sophisticated New Yorkers
turned to Noél Coward,

and coloured artists and writers
began to go hungry.

History-
the smiler with the knife under the cloak.

(Police siren wails)

"He speaks good damn English to me.

I'm his brother- Carver.

He doesn't speak that 'dis' and 'dat' bull
I've seen quoted."

ISAAC: One of the things I wanted them to do
was to make all their movements very slow,

creating a timeless atmosphere,

making the action slowed down,

so something could look like
it was in slow motion,

as well as sometimes slowing down the film.

But deliberately asking the performers
to move slowly.

We've got a combination of things
happening in this film.

Sometimes the camera's running slightly slow,
sometimes the performers...

Isaac's asked the performers to move in a stow
and languid way, to contribute to the feet.

All this was done live,
of course, none of this is digital.

This is a live...event, almost, if you like,

with the tracking shot co-ordinated with
movement with the projection -

on muslin, I think we had it on, hanging muslin.

So there 's movement in those images too.

S0 they waft - that's another level of sensuality
that comes into these.

When he touches them, they move.

The thing that was really very important,
was how could we use certain images...

but in a way that would add to a stylisation
of the actual tracking shot

that would aid movement?

And so I think it was
this son of use of back projection

and also the kind of coming together of
the projected image and the performance

that's taking place in front of that and behind it,

using the front
and also the back of the tracking shot,

the same movement to say different things.

(Projector whirs)

"Lowering my pants...

before another mouth.

The cheap movie reel rattles
in its compartment."

This was a very difficult shot to do.

Because, basically,
it's just the edge of someone's head,

and it's all black.

And the person's got black hair and they're
black and they're in a dark space.

Then you're trying to reveal them in one shot.

And some of the shots we were trying to do
were quite difficult shots to achieve.

It's a really simple shot
but technically it's really difficult.

Down from the screen onto the back of his
head, tracking round him, very tight and close.

It's a bit of a focus puller's nightmare.

(Laughs) But we got there in the end.

"Giving the movie its dialogue.

Now we think...as we fuck

this...nut...might...kill us.

There might be a pin-sized hole..."

That sequence - what we're doing is actually
flagging tights on and off.

There's light shifting
from the video screen on the face,

but on the couple together there's lights on
and off - you leave things to the imagination.

You don't have to see everything.

"putting lips, tongues, everywhere."

ISAAC: In this scene,

it was how could you have
something that was raunchy

but was also not going to
completely be censored, as well?

So trying to play that was very interesting.

And also, at this particular moment,
you're dealing with quite a lot of censorship.

There's also a censorship issue
in terms of the making of the film,

because the Langston Hughes estate
objected to the equating of Hughes's work

and homoeroticism.

But that's another longer story.

NARRATOR: Sometimes on the edge of sleep,

these faces and others are projected
against the wall of memory.

And almost immediately, I am back
in the gallery where I first saw these faces

and heard their names.

Being introduced to Alain Locke
at an impromptu all-boy tea party.

Kissing Langston Hughes,
and never forgetting it.

Being photographed by Carl Van Vechten.

Staging the first production of Baldwin's
The Amen Corner at Howard University.

Straightening Harold Jackman's tie.

Not caring much for Countee Cullen's looks.

Hunting dark meat with Auden up in Harlem.

Being loved.

What probably seemed obvious to him then,
would not make itself clear to me for years.

We were linked by our homosexual desires.

Eventually I discovered that they had broken
a number of rules about..."

ISAAC: This is another scene from
Ten Minutes To Live.

And I was looking at this fiction film,

because in this scene it had representations
of moving images of New York in the Twenties.

And this was a very important archival image
that I found as well, from an archive.

Because there were very few images of blacks
which were moving images.

And these images are very rare really,

seeing artists...

black artists at work.

L remember when this was first shown,
that people were really surprised.

Lots of art historians didn't know
that this sort of footage existed.

And so um...

part of this was also interest in,
in a sort of art historical sense,

seeing this mural, for example,

which no longer exists.

But people were really surprised to see
that this archival representation

was in a film made by a black British person,
unbeknown to them.

So that was something
that was really quite a revelation,

and, in a way, created a certain sort of
academic and scholarly interest in the film.

An interest that would clash with some of
the African-American literary scholars,

who were interested in having a very canonised
and very neutral representation of Hughes

as the race man - not as someone who was
interesting in terms of his sexual identity

and that could aid his actual writing
and literature.

♪ Jazzy instrumental

One of the other things as well
is the casting.

Ben Ellison actually does look like
Langston Hughes when he was younger.

He really looks like him.

Again, here we have a deliberate clash
over the River Thames.

Because I wanted to reveal that this film
actually wasn't shot in the States,

that it was shot in England, in London,

and it was actually shot
at a contemporary moment.

But again we have this son of
representation of the train,

which is a son of running motif in the film.

"The poem ends soft as it began.

I loved my friend."

For the American version, because of
the demands of the Langston Hughes estate,

we actually had to take out
some of Hughes's poems.

They wanted us to completely remove
the references to Hughes.

They wanted us to change the title of the film.

And what was interesting in terms of
how a certain, if you like,

cause célébre developed from this,

was that a number of black intellectuals
and scholars, such as Henry Louis Gates,

bell hooks and Cornell West,
all came to the defence of the film.

And, in a way, that created a space
for the film to exist.

And it created an interest, really, as well.

But it was something which was really being
contested by the estate at that time,

because they were very nervous about trying to
keep a very pure and canonised representation.

"A city dreaming to a lullaby.

Reach up your hand, dark boy,
and take a star

Out of the little breath of oblivion that is night.

Take just one star."

This sequence that we 've just got into here -
it's been running for a while now -

it's the angel's point of view.

I mean, the angel's obviously a reference
to the cinema of Jarman,

but also, kind of, in the film I was thinking about
Walter Benjamin's Angel Of History.

That was another idea that I was interested in.

"..But I knew I was fucking fallen angels..."

It's something that a number of writers
have looked at now,

Kaja Silverman, in particular.

One of the things that one was trying to think
about in terms of making this piece of work

was really how could you try to construct
a certain imaginary

that would lend itself to thinking about
questions of death and immortality,

and at the same time link it to
the films of Cocteau, for example,

one of the main other influences
in terms of the film.

At the same time, there's a conversation that's
taking place between these different cinemas -

silent cinema,
a cinema from the late Eighties of Jarman,

but also harking back to Cocteau.

"..L can change the order of things
to suit my desperations.

You can raise your legs.

Almost touch heaven.

I can be an angel falling."

This sequence that you're going to see here

is shot actually at the back of a nightclub
called Heaven,

which is, I think, still running.

It's been a site for clubbing for gays
for at least 2O years in London.

And one of the things I was trying to do,

was really create a social space, a queer space.

And that sort of queer space
gets referenced, really, pictorially,

by trying to link the film both
to the contemporary and the past.

And so, again, all the spaces
are quite deliberately chosen,

in terms of locations.

This sort of attack that's happening
at the end of the film really is set in the present,

if you like.

But also references what was happening
in London in this particular time,

where a number of clubs
were being closed down,

because they were frequented by gays.

And, of course, it's also referencing
the attitude to the speakeasies

from the Twenties and the Thirties in Harlem,

which were also being policed

because alcohol was illegal
at that particular time in New York State.

Obviously, these sorts of spaces
had that activity.

So, this question of censorship,
and also of surveillance,

is really one of the central preoccupations
in the last sequence.

And obviously the poem,

which is a call and response poem,

is also very important in terms of trying
to think about the ways in which

we were going to construct a visual relation

between what's being said and what we see.

"Singapore Slings toasted you.

Under the music pumping from the jukebox.

They were promises chilled by ice cubes.

...chilled by ice cubes.

The boys whisper, the sloe gin fizzes,

under the music pumping from the jukebox.

The light,

your body a green light.

The boys danced, darling.

Touching you indiscreetly.

Dancing, on the edge of fire.

Your voice, falling from the air.

Elation and laughing.

I saw you last night in the basement...
of the Brass Rail.

(Door is forced open)

♪ House

We've got a great mix of techniques here.

We're on a crane, we're hand-held...

static...

cutting through to previous images.

It's a great kind of collage of stuff, really,

this last sequence
that you put together with the editor.

I think when we were editing this sequence,

I was very much thinking about
Eisenstein's montage of attraction,

and thinking about
how you can try to make a statement

through the juxtaposition of different images
which are quickly edited.

There are all these sons of ideas
that one's trying to play with.

You're playing with these ideas in a culture
which is not so interested in these strategies.

Just going back on that last scene,

the last scene is almost a classic
confrontational Western situation -

a group outside who are trying to get in,

and a group inside who, in theory, might want
to get away, or not be there when they arrive.

S0 one would be normally cutting backwards
in a very narrative way,

and building up a tension
to a final confrontation.

But Isaac does
a completely different thing here.

He layers it with all sorts of other stuff going on.

And, in fact, just works against that -

does build it up, and you do worry.

One does worry about whether these people
are going to be all right or not who are inside.

But it all just goes off
into a completely other dimension,

and there's that fantastic shot
of one of the angels laughing at the end

and bringing in Langston Hughes.

ll ties it up and takes it to a completely different
place than one would expect it to go to.

It's interesting to think about film
as a technology.

I'm thinking about the technicality
in terms of shooting this piece of work,

and what may look like almost special effects
in this sequence.

It's storyboarded,

and we're thinking about the ways in which
we can try to create a scene through montage,

radical montage,

and building this narrative expectation,
this tension, this possible violence,

and then not delivering the normative
expectations that one would ordinarily receive

from such a sequence in its ending,

and deliberately second-guessing
the audience,

and doing that by actually
trying to then evoke a poetic conclusion,

or ending to the film,

and playing really
with those narrative expectations.

And some people have said, "Why do you have
an angel that's laughing at the end?"

The angel's laughing at the end, because
really it's about the phantasmatic for me -

you have one society that produces fantasies
about what the other might be doing.

And it's precisely that idea of the real power
of fantasy or the phantasmatic,

and having an end
where the subject has the last laugh,

and we have the return to Hughes
reciting the poem.

"..On the edge of fire..."

And really thinking about film as song,

we have a contemporary representation
of a song called Can'! You Feel It,

which was a very specific gay...

or specifically black iconic song,

which represented house music at that
particular time, which emanated from Chicago.

And this song is a son of anthem, if you like,
of that moment.

And in this sequence, then,
you're also contemporising the past,

deliberately blurring it,

with this introduction
of what would become a scene

which, in a way, plays with time and space.

Yeah, and that angel goes beautifully
into Langston's final lines.

This ending has this deliberate play.

'Cos in a blues song,

usually what happens
is that you have the artist or the song

being about a character
that's down on their luck.

But there's usually a joke at the end,

and so that joke is usually reflected in having
a certain self-reflexivity about your situation,

and looking at that position ironically.

And so there was this idea of trying to do that
for the ending,

and deliberately playing with those normative
or narrative expectations

that the scene was trying to build up.

Sun's a-risin'.

(Music starts up)

This is gonna be my song.

The sun's a-risin',

This is gonna be my song.

I could be blue,

But I've been blue all night long.