The Thing @ The Pink Pony Presents an evening with Tom Kalin

The Pink Pony
176 Ludlow Street, NYC 10002
(between Stanton & Houston)
Tuesday November 29th, 2011, 8pm

Tom Kalin is a New York-based filmmaker, writer, producer and activist, well known as a prominent figure in the New Queer Cinema. In addition to his feature films Swoon (1992) and Savage Grace (2007), Tom Kalin has also created short films and video works screened in numerous international film festivals and included in the permanent collections of Centre George Pompidou, Paris and MOMA, New York. He was a founding member of AIDS activist collective Gran Fury, known for its provocative public art projects, which received The Brendan Gill Prize in 1989 and was included in the Venice Biennial in 1991. His works traverse diverse forms and genres, taking inspiration from literary sources and addressing contemporary issues such as displacement, urban isolation, and homophobia. Tom Kalin focuses on the portrayal of gay sexuality and has done a significant work in changing the public opinion of AIDS, simultaneously expanding the definition of activist video. 

Doveman is a band founded by 30-year old Thomas Bartlett.  Originally from Vermont, Bartlett studied piano in London with Maria Curcio before moving to New York City to attend Columbia University.  Bartlett collaborates with artists such as Glen Hansard, The National, Martha Wainwright, Antony and the Johnsons, David Byrne, Bebel Gilberto, Rufus Wainwright and Yoko Ono.  Albums include With My Left Hand I Raise The Dead, Footloose, The Acrobat and The Conformist.

Screening:
Doveman films
2011/22 minutes (works-in-progress)
This ongoing collaboration between musician Thomas Bartlett (Doveman) and filmmaker Tom Kalin started as a series of short films inspired by Doveman’s music. Our project has begun to explore the intersection of live music and projected film.

Every Wandering Cloud
2005 /7 minutes
Every Wandering Cloud is the first installment in a series of experimental videos inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde. Interweaving text from Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol with hand-drawn animation derived from Eadweard Muybridge’s Human and Animal Location, Every Wandering Cloud is a meditation on themes of freedom and imprisonment. The tape juxtaposes an eclectic array of archival and contemporary imagery, including documentary footage and my original super-8 and digital video.

Geoffrey Beene 30
1993/32 minutes
Commissioned by American fashion designer Geoffrey Beene to celebrate his thirtieth anniversary as a designer, Geoffrey Beene 30 returns to the era of silent black and white film. Three loosely structured narratives unfold without dialogue, in an associative landscape inspired by the German Expressionist filmmakers of the 1920s, the work of Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel and the Pabst/Louise Brooks film Diary of A Lost Girl among others. Featuring an ensemble cast including Marcia Gay Harden, Russell Wong, Claire Danes and the remarkable Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors in one of her final roles, Geoffrey Beene 30 reunites many of Kalin’s collaborators from his first feature, Swoon.