J Paul Johnson
Currently screening at festivals but also something of a proof-of-concept film for a planned docuseries on the subject, Light Up focuses on stories from the Black LGBTQ+ community with the hopes of inspiring others. Directed by Ryan Ashley Lowery, the film focuses on four same-gender-loving men and a transgender woman who have found success and solace by living in their truth. That’s not something any of them found easily growing up Black in communities where queer people were often shunned if and when seen at all.
Each of the five subjects profiled has a unique and compelling story to share, and all of them enjoy a degree of celebrity: for them and for the project, visibility in public forums and media is a crucial part of their ethos and mission. Benjamin Carlton is an influential minister, activist, actor, and author whose coming-out narrative, originally published on The Root.com and entitled “I’m Black, I’m a minister, and I’m gay,” went viral—he was depicted there in the featured image in his ministerial attire—and later became the impetus for his later book of the same name I’m Black, I’m a Minister, and I’m Gay. But he lived, as he put it, a falsehood for decades: he knew he was gay since his childhood and found the courage to come out only when he was 30.
Simone Tisci is a transgender actress who first gained recognition as a contestant on HBO’s Legendary and has been featured on CBS’s Equalizer. She now works predominantly in makeup but is also a dancer. She, too, had to face resistance against her decision, in her case to transition: it was a choice that cost her her relationships with her hometown family members in Nebraska but allowed her to live her authentic self as a woman in Atlanta. In her adulthood, it was finding a ballroom “house”—The House of Tisci—that allowed her to join with other queer dancers and find the connections and community that became, ultimately, the family she always wanted.
Octavius Terry was a college track star whose life in the closet was stifling and unsatisfying; today, he is an award-winning fashion designer whose work is highly visible—worn, even, by Tarell Alvin McCraney when he accepted the Best Adapted Screenplay for the movie Moonlight at the Academy Awards in 2017: host Jimmy Kimmel proclaimed McCraney’s the “best tuxedo of the night.” Watching from home, Terry was gleeful; it hadn’t been that long before he’d begun his fashion journey with a simple sewing class. Like the others, his journey to success was a circuitous path that required an embrace of his true self.
Among those Terry has worked with is celebrity hairstylist Derek Jae, a recognizable figure on Bravo from his hosting Fashion Queens and recurring on Real Housewives of Atlanta. Jae cuts a dashing feature in his gowns and dresses; he also, like Carlton, freely self-examines his relationship with his God, asking “If God is so amazing, so forgiving, why would he damn the person you are?” Rounding out the cast is Obio Jones, a model, actor, influencer, and activist whose father took a full two years to accept the fact that his son was gay.
What works best in Light Up is that each of these five subjects has a compelling story to tell and graciously, honestly shares that with Lowery and his primary interviewer, Maurice Eckstein. None of the five’s stories replicate each other, but each traces a complex and even sometimes traumatic journey of self-acceptance. To Lowery’s and Eckstein’s credit, the interviews are sincere and even revelatory.
Most of the film takes place around Atlanta’s Fashion Week, an affair in which each of the participants has a stake. But aside from their coming-out stories and the fact that each lives and works in Atlanta, there is not a great deal of interaction between them and for all its topical importance Light Up is less a singular narrative than a collection of stories. One challenge in telling them is that all the drama is in the past, and while each of the subjects is an able storyteller, the film’s visuals cannot always keep pace with the interviewee’s reminiscences. For instance, Jones’ coming-out narrative is compelling, but the only visuals aside from some family photos that exist to accompany it are dozens of shots from his current modeling portfolio.
In that sense—finding a singular narrative thread to bind together the stories of these five people who have come to self-acceptance and self-love in their Black queer communities—Light Up may find even more impact as a docuseries. Lowery has shot not just these five subjects but 17 others as well, including a heterosexual man with a gay son and lesbian mother, an ex-NFL player, a mayor, emergency room doctor, elite gymnastics coach, a photographer, an event promoter, a queer male and female polygamous couple, and a gay couple that owns several LGBTQ+ welcoming venues.
Lowery has spoken to how growing up in a small town outside of Charlotte, he never saw nor knew of any gay people. He had heard only rumors of their existence and thought, as a consequence, he was alone. He never saw people like himself and when he did, they were more often than not stereotypical caricatures of gay men that didn’t reflect who he or his friends were. What could he conclude other than that he simply “didn’t exist.” But with Light Up Lowery, his team, and his subjects has worked to change that: folks in the Black queer community represent a range of impressive accomplishments and have often had to surmount significant obstacles to do so.
The docuseries project Lowery plans may have even greater promise than the feature film: shed from the challenges of tying together disparate stories and subjects into a singe narrative and buoyed, one imagines, by the support of a streaming service or cable channel’s technical and financial resources, Light Up promises to reach an even wider audience in the future. And that’s a good thing: these are people whose stories deserve and need to be heard. Only knowledge can combat the ignorance, stereotypes, and prejudice that still even today too often predominate cultural narratives about queerness.
