Opening the film is a
voice-over of the original radio broadcast made in tribute to
Langston Hughes upon his death in 1967 as the scene of his funeral is recreated and reinterpreted. Interspersed among such images as shifting time periods that seamlessly flow from past to present, black men dancing together within a
revisionist version of the
Cotton Club, or a
speakeasy, and dream sequences, are brief narrative extracts from the poetic works of Hughes alongside those of
Richard Bruce Nugent,
James Baldwin, and
Essex Hemphill. Also shown are the controversial images of black men by the photographer
Robert Mapplethorpe. The film is not a
biography of Langston Hughes. It is a memoriam to Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance as reconstructed from a black gay perspective. Moreover, it purports to be a meditation on the black gay experience within a historical context built around the
homophobia, oppression and denial faced by men of African descent within black communities alongside "allusions and political commentary on white racism." Hughes is presented as an icon and cultural
metaphor for black gay men who were confronted with being ostracized if they did not conform to black
bourgeoisie standards whose overriding goal concerned fuller
social integration. Contested are the ways the black male and his sexuality have been represented in the modern Western world and how existing notions of race and gender figure within
American and
African-American culture. Moreover, adding to the historic and cinematic importance of the film in gay cinema,
Looking for Langston continues to be one of very few films showing intra-racial affection between black gay men as revealed in the love story between the two leading black
protagonists, with Ben Ellison as Langston Hughes and Matthew Baidoo as Beauty. Upon the first release of
Looking for Langston in the
United States in 1990, the estate of Langston Hughes initially attempted to have the film censored because of
copyright violations: permission allegedly had not been obtained by the filmmakers permitting them to use the poetry of Hughes in the film. During subsequent screenings of
Looking for Langston, the sound was repeatedly turned down when the work of Hughes was read. Despite allegations of
censorship from critics at the time of the U.S. premiere of the film, the estate had allowed many of Hughes' poems to appear in gay anthologies in the print media and continues to do so. Today it falls under the auspices of the
British Film Institute as part of its national "Black World" initiative celebrating black creativity in film. ==Cast==