Akim Mogaji
2021
Looking for Langston
Isaac Julien
Ben Ellison, Matthew Baidoo
A black and white, fantasy-like recreation of high-society gay men during the Harlem Renaissance, with archival footage and photographs intercut with a story. A wake is going on, with mourners gathered around a coffin. Downstairs is an elegant bar where tuxedoed men dance and talk. One of them has a dream in which he comes upon Beauty, who seems to reject him, although when he awakes, Beauty is sleeping beside him. His story and his visits to the jazz and dance club are framed by voices reading from the poetry and essays of Hughes and others. The text is rarely explicit, but the freedom of gay Black men in the 1920s in Harlem is suggested and celebrated visually.
Looking for Langston
Milner
John Strickland
Mel Smith, Deborah Findlay
Stephen Milner is a solicitor, but he fits uneasily into the world of Lewis Strange and Partners, who are an upmarket firm of solicitors. The film follows Milner's fraught relationship with a lucrative client, Ron Jesson. When one of his offices goes up in flames, the press are convinced that Ron arranged the fire for insurance purposes. Milner also has to cope with an estranged wife, batty mother and debt ridden younger brother.
Milner