Draft:Tom Joslin

Tom Joslin
Born	November 26, 1946 Massachusetts, USA
Died	July 1st, 1990 Los Angeles County, California, USA
Cause of death	AIDS
Occupation(s)	Documentary filmmaker, teacher and writer
Years active	1970's - 1990
Notable work	Silverlake Life: The View from Here (1993); Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend (1976)
Partner	Mark Alan Massi (1968-1990)

Thomas Hancock “Tom” Joslin (November 29, 1946 - July 1st, 1990) was an American experimental filmmaker, professor and director known for Silverlake Life: The View from Here (1993).

Life and career

Joslin was born in Melrose, Massachussets in 1946. He earned his B.A at the University of New Hampshire in 1972, and his MFAfrom the Rhode Island School of Design in 1976. He taught film at Hampshire College in the late ’70s and at the University of Southern California from 1986 to 1990.

Joslin began filming in 8mm when he was 14. His work included "Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend" (1976) and "Architecture of Mountains" (1979). He worked as an associate producer in Matthew Patrick's "Atrapados", a foreign art house film released in 1981, featuring his partner Mark Massi as an actor. He moved to Hollywood where he co-founded the Primary Colors Company with Selise E. Eiseman while working at Zoetrope Studios.

"Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend" (1976)

Joslin’s eclectic, self-ethnographic documentary uses a dizzying panoply of film techniques to dissect and reassemble the filmmaker’s complex gay identity, and to describe his embattled, tender romantic union with partner Mark Massi. Unflinchingly depicts casual devastation, meditations on premature loss, and the director’s personal journey towards a liberating honesty.

Metrograph.com

"Blackstar starts with bits of gay-ish surrealistic film made by Tom Joslin since he was fourteen and is based arround a series of interviews with Joslin's family and lover. All the interviewees seem awkward: the family are uncomfortable with his gayness and even more with having to acknowledge both it and their discomfort on film; the lover is embarrassed, especially when Joslin tries to get him to make love on camera. No-one wants to talk about gay sexuality, highlighting precisely the avoidance of openness which CO challenges. This is compounded by the film's construction, where one interview undercuts another, revealing the strain involved in Tom's attempt to integrate his family and love-life. Ray Olson (1979:10) describes one instance: "the juxtaposition of his mother's talk with that of his lover criticizing her erodes our confidence in both of them: she seems not so much as at first the warm, accepting mother; he is caught out in loverly insecurity". Showing awkwardness, evasion, and distrust, Blackstar constructs a picture of the uncomfortable way tha CO works in day-to-day interactions."

Dyer, R., & Pidduck, J. (2003). Now You See it. Psychology Press.

In 2022, "Blackstar" was restored jointly by IndieCollect and the UCLA Film & Television Archive with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

"Silverlake Life: The View from Here" (1993)

Production

"Self-representation or virtual performance is necessarily constructed by the autobiographical occasion but need not therefore be invalidated. (...) The coherence and continuity of the "character" Tom Joslin emerges from his interaction on film as in life with the partner with whom he lives and suffers and in company he dies. (...) The personalizing of the subject position of the camera underlines the specular nature of viewing Silverlake Life and of "the view from here". It turns the lived experience into a way of seeing always from at least two perspectives, those of perceiver and perceived."

Egan, S. (1999). Mirror Talk. UNC Press Books.

"The film theorist Peggy Phelan writes that "Silverlake Life resolutely and imaginatively reexamines the link between the temporality of death and the temporality of cinema". The complexity of the opening moments substiantes this claim. Through this condensed exchange of images and sounds the salient points of the narrative appear, including Tom's death, Mark's grieving and Peter's relationship to his friends and the video. The film immediately invokes the personal crisis narrative, this time figured in the death of a partner."

Lane, J. (2002). The Autobiographical Documentary in America. Univ of Wisconsin Press.

Filmography

Sources:

• Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend (1976) - 94min.
• Shooting at Work (1976)
• Silverlake Life: The View from Here (1993) - 99min.
• Architecture of Mountains (1979, released posthumously in 2010) - 62min.

Production credits

• Atrapados (1981) - associate producer
• The Telephone (1988) - assistance for Moctesuma Esparza
• The Milagro Beanfield War (1988) - casting assistant

References

Category:Queer artists Category:American experimental filmmakers