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Looking for Langston (1989)

★★½ — Looking for Langston (1989)

Isaac Julien made Looking for Langston as part of his early work with Sankofa Film & Video, the Black British collective that was producing some of the most formally adventurous cinema to come out of the UK in the 1980s. Julien was in his mid-twenties at the time, and the film arrived a couple of years before his breakthrough feature Young Soul Rebels (1991). Produced with BFI support and running at just 45 minutes, it sits more comfortably alongside essay film and video art than conventional cinema, and screened primarily in gallery and festival contexts rather than traditional theatrical release. The film also ran into immediate legal trouble, with the estate of Langston Hughes initially refusing clearance for his poetry, which shaped both its production and its early circulation.

Looking for Langston (1989) is less a traditional film and more a lyrical, dreamlike meditation (part archival collage, part poetic elegy) exploring Black LGBTQ desire, identity, and the hidden histories of the Harlem Renaissance. Directed by Isaac Julien, it weaves together reimagined scenes from the 1920s, readings of Langston Hughes’ poetry (alongside works by James Baldwin, Bruce Nugent, and others), and slow, sensual imagery that feels both intimate and mythic. Visually, it’s stunning: smoky jazz clubs bathed in golden light, slow-motion glances, bodies in quiet communion, all rendered with a painterly grace that honors its subjects without exoticizing them. The sound design, too, is immersive, blending period music with whispered verse to create an atmosphere that’s haunting and reverent. But if you’re not drawn to experimental, non-narrative cinema (or if poetry isn’t your thing) it’s easy to feel adrift. There’s no plot, no character arcs, just mood and metaphor. And while that’s precisely the point, it makes the film feel distant to viewers seeking story or structure. It’s not lacking in artistry (it’s rich with it), but because its form and rhythm simply aren’t for everyone, it’s a film for purists, poets, and those willing to sit in ambiguity. Beautiful, yes. Moving, certainly. But for me? A little too abstract to fully connect with.

Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1989 | Watched: 2026-02-27

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