TOM KALIN CURRENT + UPCOMING EVENTS

From Emmy® Award-winning Killer Films (This American Life, Mildred Pierce) and Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winning VICE Studios (Flee, The Report) comes PRIDE, a six-part documentary series chronicling the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights in America from the 1950s through the 2000s.

Seven renowned LGBTQ+ directors explore heroic and heartbreaking stories that define us as a nation. The limited series spans the FBI surveillance of homosexuals during the 1950s Lavender Scare to the “Culture Wars” of the 1990s and beyond, exploring the queer legacy of the Civil Rights movement and the battle over marriage equality.

Featuring little-known characters such as Madeleine Tress or 1980s videographer Nelson Sullivan who chronicled a vanishing downtown New York City during the AIDS epidemic, the series also features international figures such as Civil Rights pioneer Bayard Rustin, writer Audre Lorde and Senators Tammy Baldwin and Lester Hunt. The evolution of trans rights and identities through the decades is charted through interviews and archival footage of pioneers including Christine Jorgensen, Flawless Sabrina, Ceyenne Doroshow, Susan Stryker, Kate Bornstein, Dean Spade and Raquel Willis.

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It was fun to talk with friends about queer cinema for Sundance 2021

B. Ruby Rich and other LGBTQ+ titans gather 30 years after their original 1992 Festival talk to look back and imagine forward. Guests include B. Ruby Rich, Andrew Ahn, Gregg Araki, Lisa Cholodenko, Cheryl Dunye, Silas Howard, Isaac Julien, Tom Kalin, and Rose Troche.

Check out the video here.

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On February 2, 2021, Columbia University School of the Arts faculty members Aliza Nisenbaum and Tom Kalin discuss the solo exhibition, Aliza Nisenbaum, on display through June 27 at Tate Liverpool.

You can read more here.

“The exhibition captures the stories of British frontline NHS (National Health Service) workers and highlights the impact that Covid-19 has had on their jobs and home lives. Sitters include a professor of Outbreak Medicine, a respiratory doctor who became a father during the first wave, and a student nurse who comes from a family of nurses who all chose to return to frontline work.

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I created the video projections used in Mandy Patinkin’s touring “Diaries” show, 2019-2020. Here’s the schedule for his tour.

Here’s a link to FROM THE AIR his recording of the Laurie Anderson classic, video by me.

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Please share far and wide! Gran Fury has a new website with high resolution downloads of our work, all of which is in the public domain.

granfury.org

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Just in time for the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, Gran Fury is pleased to announce our new website with downloadable links. Please visit:

granfury.org

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I’m pleased and honored to share the new video I made for The Gloaming’s song Meáchan Rudaí (The Weight of Things) You can view it here.

When I heard Meáchan Rudaí (The Weight of Things) my body understood before my brain did. I don’t speak Irish and while reading the translation to Liam Ó Muirthile’s remarkable poem, the song unfolded, again. I knew I had to find imagery to convey the hidden -- sometimes harsh -- beauty of the every day.

These unpopulated, high-resolution landscapes were photographed in the meadows near my Catskills home and high above Manhattan, using a motorized “slider”, the moving image stitched together from thousands of photographs to convey an incremental journey through space and time.

For my “actors”, I turned to the past. In 1938 and 1939, a man named Ivan Besse photographed several hours of home movies in Britton, South Dakota, a small town of a few thousand people that served as a cross-country railway stop. He captures little scraps of happiness: a chuckling farmer petting his pig trophy; a Stetson-wearing boy staring down the camera; a woman recoiling in shy surprise as she discovers the lens.

Finally, a series of ghostly visitations layers rural, Depression-era South Dakota school kids over the gleaming twilight of New York City: “The weight of the music of your country voice in the city.”

You can read more about the song and the band’s tour here.

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Gran Fury’s painting RIOT (study) is included in the show “IN A FEW WORDS” at Sikkema Jenkins along with Steven Evans, Jenny Holzer, Glen Ligon, Marlene McCarty, Lorna Simpson and Kara Walker. You can read more here. The show is up until February 23, 2019

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As part of the Industry Lab 2018 at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur in November, I spoke on the panel “Shorts about Shortage.” Speakers: included Johannes Binotto (cultural/media scholar, CH), Maria Palacios Cruz (Deputy Director LUX London, UK), Alexandra Gelis (filmmaker, CO/CA), Malte Hagener (professor of media studies, DE), Mike Hoolboom (filmmaker, CA), Maike Mia Höhne (Berlinale Shorts, DE), Tom Kalin (filmmaker, USA)

You can read more here and here.

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Gran Fury’s billboard Welcome To America is currently at 985 Ingleside Rd, Norfolk, VA 23502, part of the national For Freedoms project. You can read more here.

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Gran Fury is currently exhibiting READ MY LIPS, an installation at Auto Italia in London. You can read more here.

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I'm incredibly proud of the video I made with Mandy Patinkin and Thomas Bartlett’s for their ongoing collaboration. Check out Mandy's version of FROM THE AIR. You can view it here. The video will be included in Mandy's live performances which begin October 10 in NYC.

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I was interviewed at The Whitney Museum for Whitney Stories, talking about the work of artist Edgar Heap of Birds. You can view the video here.

Tom Kalin of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury responds to American Policy, a series of pastel drawings by Cheyenne/Arapaho artist Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds and discusses language-based artwork.

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Swoon screens at the Herzliya Cinematheque in Israel as well as three other cities. You can read more here.

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SWOON and GEOFFREY BEENE 30 will screen at the Museum of the Moving Image on Friday September 14, 2018 honoring the one and only Thérèse DePrez as part of the series Indie by Design: The Films of Production Designer Thérèse DePrez. You can read more here and find the full schedule.

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My films Finally Destroy Us and Confirmed Bachelor are included in “MUSIC FOR THE EYES” at the Santa Maria Della Scala in Siena, Italy from August 10 - November 4, 2018.

You can read more here.

Starting in the 80s, Pop music has been decisively enriched by an extraordinary expressive and communicative instrument: the videoclip. It began to weave an intense creative exchange with other art expressions like cinema, visual arts and environmental installations. The boundaries defining diverse artistic media became unstable and unclear in a mutual cross-referencing of images, rhythms, quotes and propositions. Edited by Luca Qauttrocchi, the "visual-voiced exhibition" Musica per gli occhi (Music for the eyes) aims to analyse this form of fertile hybridization, that not only leads artists and film directors to work with the videoclip, but also sees it and pop music as a way of offering video artists new creative impulses and cause for reflection about contemporary society.
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SWOON screens at Lincoln Center, part of the series The Female Gaze, honoring female cinematographers (the great Ellen Kuras shot Swoon).

JULY 30 and AUGUST 6, 2018 - you can read more / get tickets here.

“One of the most daring works to emerge from the New Queer Cinema movement of the early 1990s, Swoon offers a radical, revisionist perspective on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. Channeling the spirits of Dreyer, Bresson, and Jean Genet, director Tom Kalin challenges viewers to identify with two of the most notorious killers of the 20th century, their crime—the Nietzsche-influenced thrill killing of a schoolboy in 1920s Chicago—and punishment recounted in ghostly black and white by Ellen Kuras. Throughout, Kalin cannily deconstructs the ways in which Leopold and Loeb’s homosexuality has been historically sensationalized and demonized—a provocative analogy for queer persecution in the AIDS era.”

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I did a fun interview with talented writer Joe Brennan with great photographs by Zhang Qingyun for Hello Mr. magazine’s 10th (and last) issue in July, 2018. You can read a portion of the interview here.

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Gran Fury’s work is included in The Whitney Museum’s “An Incomplete History of Protest”. You can read more here.

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I made the video for the song FESTINA for Thomas Bartlett and Nico Muhly's album Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music from Nonesuch on May 18, 2018. You can view the video here.

You can also read more here.

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Coffeehouse Chronicles #146: Mario Montez

March 24, 2018 at LaMama

You can read more HERE.

Coffeehouse Chronicles honors the life and career of actor, drag performer & Warhol Superstar Mario Montez
with panelists, live performances and including archival material from the La MaMa Archives.

Moderator
Conrad Ventur

Panelists
Brian Belovitch, Bibbe Hansen, Joe E. Jeffreys, Tom Kalin, Agosto Machado & Lola Pashalinski

Interludes
Lady Quesa’Dilla
Carmelita Tropicana
16mm projection of Mario Banana 1 (Andy Warhol, 1964)

Video Testimonies
Samuel R. Delany

With excerpts from films by John Heys, Hélio Oiticica, José Rodríguez-Soltero, Jack Smith, and others.

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Gran Fury is included in the Hirshhorn show BRAND NEW: ART AND COMMODITY IN THE 1980s.

HIRSHHORN REVISITS THE 1980S
WITH “BRAND NEW: ART AND
COMMODITY IN THE 1980S” FEBRUARY 14- MAY 13, 2018

YOU CAN READ MORE HERE.

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February 3 - March 25, 2018 Broadcasting: EAI at ICA (group show)

Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

118 S. 36th Street

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

"Broadcasting: EAI at ICA" brings together an intergenerational group of artists whose time-based artworks are produced in concert with their means of circulation, from the democratic platform of public access television to the instantaneity of social media. Co-organized by ICA's Dorothy & Stephen R. Weber (CHE'60) Curator Alex Klein and Rebecca Cleman, Director of Distribution, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), this exhibition will feature works by artists including Robert Beck, Tony Cokes, Ulysses Jenkins, JODI, Tom Kalin, Shigeko Kubota, Kristin Lucas, and TVTV.

You can read more HERE.

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February 24, 2018 - 10 pm

"A Crime To Remember"

The Investigation Discovery Channel

You can read more HERE

I was interviewed for an episode in this crime series which concerns the Leopold and Loeb murder case, discussing my first feature film, Swoon.

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January 27, 2018

Savage Grace @ 10 Years

The Metrograph

You can read more HERE

The Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street, NYC

WITH TOM KALIN, CHRISTINE VACHON, KATIE ROUMEL, HOWARD RODMAN and JUANMI AZPIROZ IN PERSON

Among Julianne Moore’s juiciest roles—and that’s saying something—is that of controversial heiress Barbara Daly Baekeland, real-life tabloid fodder up to her death in 1972 and inheritor of the Bakelite plastics millions. Kalin, whose Swoon was a new queer cinema landmark, gives us Baekeland as a ruthless, debauched social climber, contemptuous of her husband (Stephane Dillane) while attached at the hip to her troubled gay son (Eddie Redmayne), who she has very curious notions about “curing,” the entire family plotted on a one-way course to infamy and True Crime catastrophe. Perfectly performed, shot with cunning control, and overdue for reconsideration.

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January 19, 2018 opening 5-7pm

Until February 14, 2018

Group Show - LOVE 2018

LeRoy Neiman Gallery 2960 Broadway New York, NY 10027

On Wednesday December 6 2017, as part of "Mod New York: Fashion Takes A Trip" at the Museum of the City of New York, Claire Henry and I will be discussing Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and Andy Warhol's Camp. You can read more here.

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Talk + Tour: Leonilson Exhibition with Tom Kalin, Gabriela Rangel, Susanna V. Temkin and Alex Fialho

AMERICAS SOCIETYYou can read more here.

Saturday, October 28, 2017 from 3:00pm–4:30pm

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In the early 1990s, directors Gregg Araki (The Living End), Tom Kalin (Swoon) and producer Christine Vachon (Poison) were on the front lines of an indie subgenre that would change the face of queer movies in America. Here, they discuss what drove the movement, what it yielded, and what comes next.You can read more HERE.

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Man + Beast, short video featured in Dallas Video Festival and Backyard Biennial, August & September 2017. Watch it HERE.

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Histórias da sexualidade - 2 day panel event at MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, May 26/27, 2017

Amelia Jones, Cecilia Palmeiro, Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker, Djamila Ribeiro, Francesco Ventrella, Ivo Mesquita, Jean Wyllys, Juan Vicente Aliaga, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Miguel A. López, Richard Miskolci, Tom Kalin, Xabier Arakistain.

You can read more HERE.

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Doveman, Craig Paull and I have made a series of short videos resisting the new president and his regime.

FAKE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8bveD6n1_Y

ME NEITHER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKZLcpreFgI

Check out my recent collaboration with Thomas Bartlett, aka DOVEMAN -- an act of resistance against Trump's distorting use of language.

https://vimeo.com/194480603

Tom Kalin: Fictionalizing History and Reinterpreting the Past

Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 7 pm
Ray Stark Family Theatre (SCA), School of Cinematic Arts 108
900 West 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90089

Making Visual History
Tom Kalin: Fictionalizing History and Reinterpreting the Past

Edited at EAI: Video Interference, Activist Videos by Artists and Collectives, 1989-1995

On Tuesday August 16, 2016, EAI continues our 45th anniversary “Edited at EAI” series with an evening of activist video work from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. Shot largely on low-end consumer equipment and edited, often off-hours, at EAI, these works use video as an activist tool, confronting urgent issues around the AIDS crisis, race, gender, and sexuality. Videos by ACT UP affinity groups DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activist Television) and House of Color, as well as art collective X-PRZ, will be screened along with work by artists Robert Beck and Tom Kalin. Although rooted in the specific political and cultural contexts of that moment, these powerful activist voices continue to resonate and find relevance today.

The urgency of the AIDS crisis and the parallel emergence of new activist movements, along with the increasing availability of relatively inexpensive video equipment, were among the factors that brought activists to editing facilities like EAI during this time. In The Feeling of Power, artist, EAI editor, and DIVA TV member Robert Beck documents a 1989 ACT UP protest at Trump Tower and offers a self-reflexive manifesto of this new video activism. Target City Hall, the first tape produced by DIVA TV, documents a massive ACT UP demonstration at New York City Hall and offers a look at the diverse groups of activists within the larger ACT UP movement, including CHER (Commie Homos Engaged in Revolution) and LAPIT (Lesbian Activists Producing Innovative Television). In I Object, House of Color (Robert Garcia, Wellington Love, Idris Mignott, Jeff Nunokawa, Pamela Sneed, Jocelyn Taylor, Julie Tolentino), an ACT UP affinity group made up of queer people of color, forcefully challenge the representation and exclusion of people of color in the media. Tom Kalin builds on the subversive, advertising-influenced work he made with ACT UP affinity group Gran Fury in Nation, which confronts nationalism and the public health crisis of AIDS, and in his later revisiting of the same material, Information Gladly Given … In No Sell Out art collective X-PRZ (Doug Anderson, Kenseth Armstead, Tony Cokes, Mark Pierson) critique the commodification of Malcolm X by the media, setting computer-manipulated imagery of Malcolm X against advertising logos, archival footage, and TV imagery.

Organized in conjunction with EAI’s 45th anniversary, the “Edited at EAI” series highlights a historically significant but less well-known area of EAI’s programs: EAI’s Editing Facility for artists, one of the first such creative workspaces for video in the United States.

Program

Robert Beck, The Feeling of Power, 1990, 8:48 min, color, sound

DIVA TV, Target City Hall, 1989, 26:43, color, sound

House of Color, I Object, 1990, 5:25 min, color, sound

Tom Kalin, Information Gladly Given but Safety Requires Unnecessary Conversation, 1995, 1:03 min, color, sound

Tom Kalin, Nation, 1992, 1 min, color, sound

X-PRZ, No Sell Out... or i wnt 2 b th ultimate commodity/ machine (Malcolm X Pt. 2), 1995, 5:37 min, color, sound

Tuesday, August 16th, 2016
6:30 pm

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011