Screening Time: Friday, May 2, 12:00 PM, Charles Theatre 3

Director: Mike Hoolboom

Cast: Tom Chomont

Country: Canada
Year: 2002
Running Time: 75 minutes
Format: Beta SP

In Tom, director Mike Hoolboom takes a unique approach to the biographical documentary genre. Instead of presenting interviews with the subject and/or friends and relatives, this experimental documentary is made almost completely from found footage to tell the story of Tom Chomont, a key member of the New York underground, a notorious video artist, AIDS sufferer, and raconteur.

Excerpts from hundreds of films, some from archival footage, some well-known Hollywood moments, stream past. Footage from Chomont’s own work is included, serving not simply as a record of artistic output, but emphasizing how an artist’s life and work can intertwine to create it’s own unique identity. In Hoolboom’s own words, “A biography about biographies, made possible, inevitable even, by the society of the spectacle.”

--Dan Krovich

Presented By:Rebecca Hoffberger, founder and director of the American Visionary Art Museum

Rebecca Hoffberger is both Founder and Director of the American Visionary Art Museum, America's official national museum for outsider art. In 1998, Hoffberger won The Urban Land Institute's coveted National Award for Excellence. In 1999, Hoffberger was elected to serve as a member of Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce. In addition to a 1996 Honorary Doctorate from the Maryland Institute College of Art, she is a recipient of numerous mental health advocacy and equal opportunity awards and has served as a director of the Jewish education and on the Board of The Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Center. A published author and development consultant for 28 years, at 16 Hoffberger became the first American to apprentice to mime, Marcel Marceau in Paris.