Jean Carlomusto

Jean Carlomusto (b. 1959-, Queens, NY) is a New York filmmaker, AIDS activist, and interactive media artist. She produced and directed HBO's Emmy nominated documentary, Larry Kramer in Love & Anger, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. Her works have been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. [1] She was an early pioneer in documenting the AIDS crisis. As the founder of the Multimedia Unit at Gay Men's Health Crisis, she created the television series Living with AIDS. She was a founding member of DIVA TV (a video affinity group of ACT UP) and a member of the Testing The Limits Video Collective. [2]

Education

Jean Carlomusto graduated from Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park, Queens, New York in 1977[3]. She earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in Film from C.W. Post in 1981[4]. She earned her M.P.S. in Interactive Telecommunications from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University[5].

Career

Jean Carlomusto is currently Director of the Television Center and Professor of Media Arts at LIU Post Long Island University in Brookville, New York[6]. Prior to her academic career, Carlomusto has played a major role in media production for AIDS activists groups. Her AIDS activist work began in 1986, while working as a teaching assistant at New York University, assisting student teams in a class making educational videos for local organizations[7]. When Joey Lianti from the Gay Men's Health Crisis came to her class to request a video, and none of the students wanted to work with him, the shame of her class' reaction drove Carlomusto to volunteer for the Gay Men's Health Crisis to increase awareness about AIDS and build empathy for those with the illness[8]. She began as the projectionist for their safe sex workshops, then left her teaching job at NYU to start up the Multimedia Production Unit in order to produce a weekly television program called Living with AIDS[8]. This was the longest running of the Gay Men's Health Crisis television series, with guest videographers including Marina Alvarez, Sarah Cawley, Ronald Dodd, Andres J. Figueroa, Laura Ganis, Alexandra Juhasz, Ray Navarro, Steven Okazaki, Catherine Saalfield, Kristin Thomas, and Paul Zakrzewski. These videographers not only made safe sex videos and educational films for healthy living with AIDS, but also gathered oral histories and interviews from diverse group of people suffering from the disease.

Carlomusto began to focus on educating women--particularly lesbians--about the AIDS virus after someone showed her an article from Cosmopolitan Magazine which said that straight women did not have to worry about AIDS. Along with Rebecca Cole, Maxine Wolfe, Maria Maggenti and Denise Ribble, Carlomusto organized a direct action against Cosmopolitan Magazine and interviewed the author of that article, psychiatrist Robert Gould, who had made uninformed statements about women and AIDS[8][9].

In February 1987, ACT UP founders Gregg Bordowitz and David Meieran filmed their first ACT UP demonstration at Wall Street. They met Jean Carlomusto at this demonstration, who was taping it for Living with AIDS[10][7]. The filmmakers built up a rapport because they were the only people at the event with non-professional video equipment. Bordowitz, Meieran, and Carlomusto contacted Hilery Kipness who worked with Downtown Community Television, along with Sandra Elgear and Robyn Hutt from the Whitney program, and together they formed the Testing the Limits collective. This collective created Testing the Limits: New York City, the first direct action AIDS activist video. After working on this film together, Bordowitz joined Carlomusto at the Gay Men's Health Crisis, working together on the Living with AIDS series from 1988 to 1994[10].

In response to several members of Testing the Limits wanting to make feature length documentaries, Carlomusto broke away with Bordowitz, Catherine Saalfield, Ray Navarro, Ellen Spiro, Costa Pappas, Robert Beck, Rob Kurilla, and George Plagianos to form DIVA TV in 1989[10]. Standing for "Damned Interfering Video Activists", DIVA TV aligned with ACT UP to continue creating short direct action videos at demonstrations, as well as 160 video programs for public access television channels, including the weekly series "AIDS Community Television" from 1991-1996, and the weekly call-in public access series "ACT UP Live" from 1994-1996. Carlomusto participated in the creation of two prominent DIVA TV videos: Like a Prayer (1991) and Fight Back! Fight AIDS!: 15 Years of ACT UP (2002), as well as producing episodes of both DIVA TV television series.

In 1991, Jean Carlomusto joined Fierce Pussy, a lesbian art collective that produced AIDS-related art and media for ACT UP. In particular, Carlomusto focused on media geared toward lesbians to increase their awareness about the disease.

The cumulative work that Carlomusto had done throughout her AIDS activist career helped her produce independent documentaries on the topics of AIDS, lesbians, and LGBT history and culture. Her best known work include the documentaries L is for the Way You Look (1991); Shatzi is Dying (2000); Sex in an Epidemic (2011), and Larry Kramer: In Love and Anger (2015)[11]. Independent from her AIDS work, Carlomusto created the personal documentary To Catch a Glimpse (2007), which investigates the mysterious death of her grandmother.

Some of Carlomusto's work is now permanently housed in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and has been exhibited in California, Sweden, and South Africa[6]. Currently she is Professor of Media Arts and Director of the Television Center at LIU Post.

Personal life

Carlomusto identifies as an Italian-American lesbian from a working class background[8]. She is a senior student at the Village Zendo in New York City. She is in a relationship with Lori Herbison>.

Publications

Carlomusto, J. (1989). "Making It: AIDS Activist Television." Video Guide, p. 18.

Carlomusto, J. (1992). "Focusing on Women." in ACT UP (ed.) Women, AIDS, and Activism, New York Women's and AIDS Book Group. Boston, MA: South End, pp. 215-218.

Carlomusto, J. (1992). "Preserving Desire". Felix: A Journal of Media Arts and Communication.

Carlomusto, J. & Bordowitz, G. (1992). "Do It! Safer Sex Porn for Girls and Boys Comes of Age." Conference paper in A. Klusaček and K. Morrison (Eds.) A Leap in the Dark: AIDS, Art, and Contemporary Cultures: 5th International Conference on AIDS. Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Carlomusto, J. (2004). "Radiant Spaces: An Introduction to Emily Roysdon's Photographs." GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 10 (4), pp. 671-679.

Carlomusto, J. (2013). "Archival Praxis." GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 19 (4), p. 570.

Pidduck, J. (2009). "Queer Kinship and Ambivalence: Video Ethnographies by Jean Carlomusto and Richard Fung." GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 15 (3), pp. 441-468.

Exhibits

"To Catch a Glimpse", part of the exhibit ''Gay Men's Health Crisis: 20 Years Fighting for People with H.I.V./AIDS." Permanent Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y. (2000-present).

"AIDS; A Living Archive", Museum of the City of New York, New York, N.Y. (2001).

“Offerings,” Museums of World Culture, Goteborg, Sweden (2004/2005); Fowler Museum, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California (2008); Durbin Art Gallery, Durbin, South Africa.

Films

Testing the Limits: New York City (Testing the Limits Collective), 1987

L is for the Way You Look (1991).

Fast Trip, Long Drop (1994).

To Catch a Glimpse (1997).

Doctors, Liars, and Women: AIDS Activists Say No to Cosmo (1998).

Shatzi is Dying (2000).

Monte Cassino (2003).

Sex in an Epidemic (2011).

How to Survive a Plague (2013).

Larry Kramer in Love and Anger (2015).

Television

Living with AIDS, Gay Men's Health Crisis, 1986-1994.

AIDS Community Television (DIVA TV), ACT UP,1991-1996.

ACT UP Live, DIVA TV, ACT UP, 1994-1996.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5475504/
  2. ↑ http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/jean-carlomusto-the-woman-who-documented-the-hivaids-movement-film
  3. ↑ "Jean Carlomusto.". Facebook.
  4. ↑ "Jean Carlomusto: The Experimental Television Center". Long Island University. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  5. ↑ "Jean Carlomusto: Experimental Television Center". Long Island University. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  6. 1 2 "LIU Carlomusto, Jean". Faculty. Long Island University. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  7. 1 2 Neese, Joseph (2014-11-30). "Jean Carlomusto: The woman who documented the HIV/AIDS movement.". MSNBC.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Schulman, Sarah. (2002, Dec 19). Interview with Jean Carlomusto. Published in 2003 by the New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival, Inc. for the ACT UP Oral History Project. Retrieved from http://www.actuporalhistory.org/interviews/images/carlomusto.pdf
  9. ↑ Schulman, Sara. (2008, June 30). Interview with Rebecca Cole. Published by the New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival in 2010 for the ACT UP Oral History Project. Retrieved from http://www.actuporalhistory.org/interviews/images/cole.pdf
  10. 1 2 3 Hubbard, Jim. "A Report on the Archiving of Film and Video Work by Makers with AIDS.". ACT UP New York. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  11. ↑ Carlomusto, Jean. "Jean Carlomusto". Jean Carlomusto. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.