Tom Chomont Trailers
Early Monthly Segments TrailerTom TrailerPanic Bodies Trailer
Tom Chomont was a prominent figure of the New York underground film world, and made films for over 40 years. Tom Chomont was a longtime HIV and Parkinson’s Disease survivor and sadly died on June 28, 2010.
“Tom Chomont’s films are at once highly poetic and carefully controlled personal statements, and so private both in form and subject matter that they become almost hermetic…the instability of human existence, the poles of all -encompassing imagination on the one hand and nothingness and death on the other, are the notions underlying these works.” – Fred Camper
From 1962 through 1989, Tom Chomont made over 40 films. All but two of his films are silent and all are short, ranging from less than 1 minute to 16 minutes. Perhaps, the subtitle of his film Phases of the Moon best characterizes his film work: The Parapsychology of Everyday Life. His films, often portraits of friends, are a lyric evocation of the ordinary world, but at the same time they bear witness to an unabashedly spiritual and sexual parallel universe. His incomparable technique of offsetting color positive and high contrast black and white negative creates a subtly beautiful and richly evocative, otherworldly aura.
Since 1990, he has worked exclusively in video. The videos are hard-edged and raw. While many center around explicit s&m imagery, they go beyond the performative aspects of sadomasochistic practice and become an entrée to a transcendent and philosophical other world.
Most Popular Tom Chomont Trailers
Total trailers found: 39
29 December 1967
Portrait studies of Mrs. Hodges, Gail Beavers (the filmmaker’s sister) and Gregory J. Markopoulos.
10 October 1998
"Panic Bodies is a 70-minute, six-part exploration of the ways we experience the body's betrayals: disease, decline and death.
09 September 2003
Filmed when Beavers was 18–19, this self-portrait depicts him and Gregory J. Markopoulos in their Swiss apartment.
07 May 2002
Portrait of gay filmmaker and Parkinson's sufferer Tom Chomont.
01 January 1966
"The first experimental films I saw were mostly trance films or reactions to trance films. [My] first films, like Anthony (1966), are rather like trance films; that’s part of the reason I didn’t think of them as my own.
01 January 1969
1 minute, color, silent 16mm
01 January 1994
Short experimental film made in 1994.
01 January 1969
“Approximately thirty images comprise Oblivion. Most obsessively repeat themselves. Although the images appear to be solarized, the film was actually contact-printed, combining high contrast black and white negative with a colour positive of the same image.
01 January 1968
“I usually avoid the term ‘film poem,’ because it was overused in the ‘40s and ‘50s. But somehow it fits Phases of The Moon; it is a film poem and nothing else.
01 January 1970
For R. B. and G. M. Filmed in Diesntis, Switzerland.
01 January 1972
Lijn II is a tiny portrait of a friend made on a contact printer from scraps of a film that was lost
08 July 1969
A portrait inspired by reading about John Millais' painting Ophelia.
01 January 1965
"I would say that the films of Mike Kuchar interest me very much. Also, some footage by a young film-maker in Boston, Tom Chomont, his footage (unedited) for Night Blossoms.
01 January 1978
Flashing lights illuminate black faces and dark eyes, oscillating between darkness and inverted lightness.
01 January 1969
Made in 1969. 1min. 16mm. Black and White
01 January 1967
The story of Jacob wrestling the angel at the stream called Jabbok.
01 January 1975
With abda I was processing black and white film myself in buckets . . . I wanted to destroy my own image.
01 January 1971
A portrait of polymorphous lovers that references the Medieval parable of Les Noces du Roi et Reine and the marriage of opposites.
01 January 1968
Two portraits paired, one warm, one cold.
01 January 1967
"I, Prolugue, II, The Angel Morpheus/The Major Arcana, III, Jeu de la main. The title refers to (a) quote attributed to Stan Brakhage regarding the avant-garde artist: 'Orpheus has been too long in Hell.
01 January 1994
Short experimental film made in 1994.
01 January 1966
Whimsical variations suggested by the minute cracks in a print of Leonardo's famous portrait.
01 June 1977
"De eevwigheid duurt een oogwenk./ De ti jd duurt maar door." – A. Roland Holet. "This film is in several short sections.
01 January 1969
The film frame sometimes seems to function as a rug-like rectangle into or onto which the lover steps.
12 September 1973
A Berlin diary.
06 August 1997
Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996.
08 July 1969
“A portrait of Carla Liss, evoking the atmosphere of the old horror films we both loved.”
01 January 1972
A film by Tom Chomont
03 September 1966
In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W.
01 January 1967
A romantic and lyric study of a young friend and readings he encouraged, especially Mallarmé.
01 January 1970
A portrait of Eric de Kuyper.
01 June 1979
"I intended to make a film about food and spiritual nourishment, but this was punctuated by two visits from a friend (upon entering the us army and the birth of his daughter).
01 January 1977
"The Heavens"–Symmetrical chaos envelops a lone, topless man, whose symmetrical abstractions conjure up a psychadelic version of DaVinci's Vitruvian Man.
01 January 1984
One man shaves another in this highly charged erotic performance.
01 January 1984
The film began as a record of the painter Joseph Glin and his series of paintings inspired by "La Maison Des Mortes" by Guillaume Apollinaire.
01 January 2006
Short video by Tom Chomont, features Robert Beavers and his mother during the filming of Pitcher of Colored Light.
17 June 1998
Video Art by Tom Chomont
01 January 1978
Portrait of the American experimental filmmaker Tom Chomont, who resided in Eruope from 1969-1975, before returning to New York.
