Midway through this documentary, a sobering statistic is sprayed onscreen: 700,000 people die from Aids very year, many of them black and/or queer. Light Up centres on a group of black queer individuals, each of them brave enough to discuss their experiences to the camera. “Everybody knew I was gay probably from when I came out of the womb,” a man tells the camera; “When the doctor hit me, I was like: ‘Do it again”. Memories of a queer childhood spent in the “hood” instilled a sense of perception in one of the men, who abstained from women’s clothing after it infuriated his mother.
One of the participants recalls a picture he drew of a man with a penis that he was going to bring to school for “show and tell.” Naturally, this didn’t end well. Another man says he was bullied for sounding “white”, largely because of a school he went to where he was one of the few black students. Where most black men face stereotypes in the United States, these subjects either had to embrace the facets that belong to queer men of colour, or disavow them completely. Cleverly, director Ryan Ashley Lowery inserts a segment from Beverly Hills Cop (Martin Brest, 1984), where Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley camps it up to obscene proportions. This is the model these subjects had to measure up to, or run from.
Some of the people interviewed said they were led to believe that homosexuality was a “mental illness”, before realising their sense of identity in the continuum of queer love. Octavius Terry says he did everything to impress his parents, and even entered the legal profession in the hope of appeasing them. As it happens, he later gave the lifestyle up to return to fashion design, returning to college as he did so. Photographs show a man happier in himself embracing his inner truth. “My gayness was my superhero,” is an aphorism each of them come to over the course of the documentary.
Derek Jae invites the camera crew into his home, a boudoir decorated by colour and abstract thought. It’s a refuge from the outside world, where uncertainty beckons on every corner. This is one territory where everything is in control and every object is lit by kaleidoscopic decoration. The space represents a transformation, a Kafkaesque metamorphosis, from timid individual to butterfly soaring the skies, searching for fun and frolics. “It’s just a safe space for me”, he admits. The film highlights their background: portraitures of protestors holding up placards supporting the sanctity of heterosexual relations remains an everyday reality for black queer men.
Some of them had to escape religious backgrounds, causing them to enter an existential funk. Cultural environments strengthen humans, but can also affect them badly. If Light Up has a weakness, it’s that the film doesn’t make an overt comment on Donald Trump’s presidency, and how the presence of a wealthy oligarch affected the geography for gay people of colour. For a film that espouses the importance of change, it lacks a political element; curious that it does not.
Documentaries live or die on the people interviewed, and in this case, they’re invigorating to listen to, bringing their sense of reality to the proceedings; documenting on film their experiences to encourage others to fly as the “superheroes” they are. The protagonists carry two narratives, race and sexual orientation, validating both aspects for the sake of the viewer in a manner that feels authentic at all times. Light Up is a truthful overview about coming out in the US; an enjoyable feature.
Light Up premiered at the Bronzelens Film Festival.
