Tom Kalin

[David Ehrenstein]

A Tom Kalin thread was requested -- and here it is.

Tom first gained attention for his work with the AIDS agitprop grou Gran Fury.

In other words he was one of the people responsible for

SILENCE = DEATH

Swoon is a beyond brilliant recounting of the Leopold and Loeb case, executed in a relentless postmodern style (eg. touchtone phones in what's supposed to be the 1920's. It establishes the fact that Clarence Darrown saved the killers from the chair by pathologizing their gayness -- thus putting the movement back for decades. (Thanks a bunch, Clarence!)

Savage Grace is about the so-called "Bakelite Murder." It's based on an oral history odf the case. Tony Bakeland, son of the super-wealthy plastics heir Brooks Bakeland and his beautiful wife Barbara displeased the folks because he was gay.

Brooks tells Barbara "Fix it!"

So she goes to bed with Tony.

Bad idea. He becomes totally unhinged and in a fit of pique slashes her throat.

And that's just for openers.

[dadaistnun]

(From the Kalin tangent in the Children of Men thread.)

I haven't seen Swoon since it came out (1992), but I recall liking it a lot. The only other thing of Kalin's I've seen is a short called Some of Them Are Old which is footage (stills?) of his friends who died of AIDS. The soundtrack is the Eno song of the same name.

He must have quite an Eno fixation - I've seen another couple of (pre-Swoon, I think) shorts of his with soundtracks provided by Warm Jets / Tiger Mountain songs. One was 'Third Uncle', the other I can't recall.

EDIT: Looks like the films I saw were Nomads (1993, accompanied by "Third Uncle") and Darling Child (1993, accompanied by "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)"). Was the "Some of Them Are Old" film Finally Destroy Us?

TOM KALIN
FINALLY DESTROY US
USA, 1991, 4 mins, video
TOM KALIN's work focuses on the portrayal of gay sexuality both in the age of AIDS and historically. His tapes are characterised by beautiful sampled images drawn from a variety of film and video sources.
'These meetings, these partings, finally destroy us.' The sense of loss of these words by Virginia Woolf is the theme around which this poetic work is conceived. Couples kissing, people walking, random faces and dreamlike film of high divers live in a silent world of old and new footage. There is an unselfconsciousness about the people we see which creates a sense of distance and pathos.

Both of the shorts I saw were fine landscape films. Swoon is a landmark of the New Queer Cinema - is it available in a decent DVD edition?

It's entirely possible I have the title of the film wrong: I worked as a projectionist at an art theater that hosts an annual gay/lesbian film festival and juggling the schedule of films, most playing only once, was nuts (but in a fun, keep-you-on-your-toes way). I made a point of catching this one both because the film notes mentioned the Eno song and I hadn't heard anything of Kalin since Swoon. The music under the title card is actually that noisy bit that concludes "Dead Finks Don't Talk" on HCTWJ.

[David Ehrenstein]

Here's Tom's filmography

Plain Pleasures, an adaptation of a Jane Bowles story, was broadcast on PBS. It's quite nice.

[dadaistnun]

Just found this longer list of short works.

[portnoy]

I wrote a paper on Swoon as a college junior, investigating textual address of homosexuality and pathology in films addressing Leopold and Loeb, so Swoon, Rope, and Compulsion. It's an excellent, dazzlingly beautiful no-budget wonder.

[zedz]

I wrote a paper on Swoon as a college junior, investigating textual address of homosexuality and pathology in films addressing Leopold and Loeb, so Swoon, Rope, and Compulsion. It's an excellent, dazzlingly beautiful no-budget wonder.

And so's the film.

(Sorry - couldn't resist.)

Does anybody know whether Kalin's concentration on shorter, experimental work since Swoon was his first choice, or is he yet another talented filmmaker who's spent years and years in financing / development hell?

And who knows anything about Plain Pleasures? A name cast, and 12 people on imdb purport to have seen it, but there's no other information, not even a running time.

[David Ehrenstein]

Does anybody know whether Kalin's concentration on shorter, experimental work since Swoon was his first choice, or is he yet another talented filmmaker who's spent years and years in financing / development hell?

The latter.

[acquarello]

When Tom Kalin appeared at the New York Video Festival back in 2003 with Robots of Sodom and Every Evening Freedom from his work in progress on Alfred Chester's experimental fiction, Behold Goliath or The Boy With the Filthy Laugh, his answer on the "installment plan" approach to Behold Goliath was more along the lines that he was working on other projects at the same time, but that Chester's fiction was something that he had wanted to do for some time. So, for that project anyway, it seemed to be more of an "as time permits" labor of love for him.

[David Ehrenstein]

Fascinating. Chester's a deeply strange figure (about whom Edward Field has written extensively.) He was a pal of Susan Sontag's and taught her all about camp. His attack on Rechy's City of Night was so severe as to merit a reprimand from Frank O'Hara. In his later years he lived in Tangier, in thrall to an Arab youth and convinced that Paul Bowles was plotting to kill him.

[doh286]

Kalin will give a lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago on Feb. 10.

He will also be present for a discussion at the Feb. 11 screening of Swoon at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.