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Release: June 22, 2021

$6.99

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There has never been a filmmaker like Marlon Riggs (1957–1994): an unapologetic gay Black man who defied a culture of silence and shame to speak his truth with resounding joy and conviction. An early adopter of video technology who had a profound understanding of the power of words and images to effect change, Riggs employed a bold mix of documentary, performance, poetry, music, and experimental techniques in order to confront issues that most of Reagan-era America refused to acknowledge, from the devastating legacy of racist stereotypes to the impact of the AIDS crisis on his own queer African American community to the very definition of what it is to be Black. Bringing together Riggs’s complete works—including his controversy-inciting queer landmark Tongues Untied and Black Is . . . Black Ain’t, his deeply personal career summation—The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs traces the artistic and political evolution of a transformative filmmaker whose work is both an electrifying call for liberation and an invaluable historical document. TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New high-definition digital masters of all seven films, with uncompressed stereo soundtracks • Four new programs featuring editor Christiane Badgley; performers Brian Freeman, Reginald T. Jackson, and Bill T. Jones; filmmakers Cheryl Dunye and Rodney Evans; poet Jericho Brown; film and media scholar Racquel Gates; and sociologist Herman Gray • Long Train Running: The Story of the Oakland Blues (1981), Riggs’s graduate thesis film • Introduction to Riggs, recorded in 2020 and featuring filmmakers Vivian Kleiman and Shikeith, and Ashley Clark, curatorial director of the Criterion Collection • I Shall Not Be Removed: The Life of Marlon Riggs (1996), a documentary by Karen Everett that features interviews with Riggs; Kleiman; filmmaker Isaac Julien; African American studies scholar Barbara Christian; several of Riggs’s longtime friends and collaborators; and members of his family • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing • PLUS: An essay by film critic K. Austin Collins ETHNIC NOTIONS Marlon Riggs brings viewers face-to-face with the insidious images that have shaped America’s racial mythologies, in his first major work, a brilliant and disturbing deconstruction of the ways in which anti-Black stereotypes have permeated nearly every aspect of popular culture. Through razor-sharp historical analysis including interviews with historians and folklore scholars, powerfully deployed imagery, and narration by actor Esther Rolle, Ethnic Notions illuminates, with devastating clarity, how dehumanizing caricatures of Black people—seen everywhere from children’s books to films to household products—have been used to uphold white supremacy and to justify slavery, segregation, and the continuing oppression of African Americans. In its refusal to look away from racism’s ugliest manifestations, this Emmy-winning documentary has become an essential text for understanding the origins of American racial violence. TONGUES UNTIED Made, in Marlon Riggs’s own words, to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” this radical blend of documentary and performance defies the stigmas surrounding Black gay sexuality in the belief that, as long as shame prevails, liberation will never be possible. Through music and dance, words and poetry by such pathbreaking writers as Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam—and by turns candid, humorous, and heartbreaking interviews with queer African American men—Tongues Untied gives voice to what it means to live as an outsider in both a Black community rife with homophobia and a largely white gay subculture poisoned by racism. A lightning rod in the conservative culture wars of the 1980s that incited a right-wing furor over public funding for the arts, the film has lost none of its resonance in its unapologetic, life-affirming declaration that “Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.” AFFIRMATIONS Marlon Riggs expresses the hopes, dreams, and desires of gay Black men in this ode to queer African American empowerment. Built around outtakes of interview and protest footage from Tongues Untied, Affirmations begins as a candid, sex-positive confessional about first-time penetration and evolves into a rousing chorus of calls for freedom, recognition, and inclusion. ANTHEM “Pervert the language.” Made at a time when Marlon Riggs was three years into living with HIV and the motto “Silence=Death” was the queer community’s defiant response to the antigay policies of the Reagan era, this experimental music video employs a mix of poetry, African beats, and provocative imagery—sexual, political, and religious—in order to challenge and redefine prevailing images of Black masculinity. Led by the liberated dancing of the filmmaker himself, Anthem is a bold vision of queer revolution, proclaiming “Every time we kiss we confirm the new world coming.” COLOR ADJUSTMENT What does the American dream look like? Where do Black Americans fit into it? And what is television’s role in shaping our views of racial progress and the idealized American family? Picking up where the groundbreaking Ethnic Notions left off, this pioneering work of media studies by Marlon Riggs presents a complicated, challenging, and nuanced view of evolving racial attitudes as reflected in popular programs such as Amos ’n’ Andy, Julia, All in the Family, Good Times, Roots, and The Cosby Show. Narrated by Ruby Dee and featuring interviews with actors Diahann Carroll, Tim Reid, and Esther Rolle, African American historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., and producer Norman Lear, among others, Color Adjustment looks beyond the whitewashed, middle-class mythologies peddled by prime-time entertainment to track the ways in which Black Americans have been assimilated into a new but no less harmful racial narrative. NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN (NO REGRET) Through music, poetry, and courageous self-disclosure, five HIV-positive gay Black men (among them poet and performance artist Assotto Saint) discuss their individual confrontations with AIDS, illuminating their journeys through the fear, shame, and stigma that accompanied the disease at the height of the epidemic toward healing, acceptance, and truth. In Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret), director Marlon Riggs tells stories of self-transformation in which a once unmentionable “affliction” is forged into a tool of personal and communal empowerment. BLACK IS . . . BLACK AIN’T Made with an urgency imparted by the knowledge that he was nearing the end of his life, Marlon Riggs’s final film—completed after his death of AIDS by a group of his devoted collaborators—is a wide-ranging consideration of a question that had long been central to his work: What does it mean to be Black? Using his mother’s gumbo recipe as a metaphor for the diversity of the African American experience, Riggs travels the country, seeking insights from leading thinkers like Angela Davis, Henry Louis Gates Jr., bell hooks, and Barbara Smith as well as ordinary people—young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight—all grappling with the numerous, often contested definitions of Blackness that have shaped their lives. Punctuated by footage of a dying Riggs directing his crew and delivering parting wisdom from his hospital bed, Black Is . . . Black Ain’t breaks down the divides of class, colorism, patriarchy, and homophobia as it issues a stirring appeal for unity. Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews The Signifyin' Works of Marlon Riggs (The Criterion Collection) (Ethnic Notions/Tongues Untied/Affirmations/Anthem/Color Adjustment/Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret)/Black Is . . . Black Ain’t)

Release: January 1, 2014

$6.99

Description

Special features disc with bonus materials only; does not include the main feature.

Release: September 5, 2023

$6.99

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Miles Morales, Brooklyn?s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must redefine what it means to be a hero so he can save the people he loves most.

Release: March 18, 2025

$7.99

Description

A shocking fusion of science fiction and hotrror. A sinister organisation kidnaps a young woman, believing her to be of vampiric descent. A battle of wills ensues as they try to force her to join their blood-drinking sacrificial cult.

Release: March 16, 2021

$6.99

Description

Civilization is cast into ruin when a runaway planet speeds between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn from the ashes with a savage landscape, strange creatures and a primitive sense of justice. But, one man fights to spread peace throughout the land: He is Thundarr the Barbarian, and you can own all 21 exciting adventures starring Thundarr and his companions Ookla the Mok and sorceress Princess Ariel. Using their strength, courage and wits, plus Thundarr's magical Sunsword, they journey from village to village, liberating slaves and battling all kinds of beasts, mutants, wizards, thieves and robots. The future of Earth may be shrouded in darkness, but Thundarr the Barbarian bursts into action as a shining symbol of hope for humanity.

Release: March 16, 2021

$6.99

Description

Civilization is cast into ruin when a runaway planet speeds between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn from the ashes with a savage landscape, strange creatures and a primitive sense of justice. But, one man fights to spread peace throughout the land: He is Thundarr the Barbarian, and you can own all 21 exciting adventures starring Thundarr and his companions Ookla the Mok and sorceress Princess Ariel. Using their strength, courage and wits, plus Thundarr's magical Sunsword, they journey from village to village, liberating slaves and battling all kinds of beasts, mutants, wizards, thieves and robots. The future of Earth may be shrouded in darkness, but Thundarr the Barbarian bursts into action as a shining symbol of hope for humanity.

Release: March 16, 2021

$6.99

Description

Civilization is cast into ruin when a runaway planet speeds between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn from the ashes with a savage landscape, strange creatures and a primitive sense of justice. But, one man fights to spread peace throughout the land: He is Thundarr the Barbarian, and you can own all 21 exciting adventures starring Thundarr and his companions Ookla the Mok and sorceress Princess Ariel. Using their strength, courage and wits, plus Thundarr's magical Sunsword, they journey from village to village, liberating slaves and battling all kinds of beasts, mutants, wizards, thieves and robots. The future of Earth may be shrouded in darkness, but Thundarr the Barbarian bursts into action as a shining symbol of hope for humanity.

Release: December 17, 2024

$6.99

Description

Eons ago, Optimus Prime and Megatron were known as Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), humble miner robots trying to sustain their people's subterranean existence, and dreaming of leading their return to Cybertron's ravaged surface. They'd get their chance-and the perilous quest that saw their friendship fissure into enmity is chronicled in this anticipated animated origin story. With the voices of Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Jon Hamm. 104 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English.

Release: December 17, 2024

$7.99

Description

Eons ago, Optimus Prime and Megatron were known as Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), humble miner robots trying to sustain their people's subterranean existence, and dreaming of leading their return to Cybertron's ravaged surface. They'd get their chance-and the perilous quest that saw their friendship fissure into enmity is chronicled in this anticipated animated origin story. With the voices of Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Jon Hamm. 104 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English.

Release: February 2, 2010

$6.99

Description

When Jess sets sail on her friend Greg's (Michael Dorman, "The Secret Life Of Us") yacht with a group of friends, she cannot shake the feeling that there is something wrong. Her suspicions are realized when the yacht hits a storm in the Bermuda Triangle and the group is forced to board a passing ocean liner to get to safety. The ship appears deserted, but Jess is convinced she's been on board before. They soon realize they are not alone and that someone is intent on hunting them down, one by one.

Release: December 25, 2018

$6.99

Description

Set in 1980s Detroit at the height of the crack epidemic and the War on Drugs, WHITE BOY RICK is based on the moving true story of a blue-collar father and his teenage son, Rick Wershe Jr., who became an undercover police informant and later a drug dealer before he was abandoned by his handlers and sentenced to life in prison.