silverlake life : the view from here
by far, the best of the lot was tom joslin and peter friedman' s silverlake life: the view from here, recently released on dvd by docurama. justly praised upon its release, the film garnered a number of festival awards, including sundance' s grand jury prize. unlike the two melodramatic and revisionist films mentioned above, silverlake life is brutal in its straightforward representation of aids as intensely personal and always political .
this is
silverlake life: the view from here ,
a feature - length documentary, edited and co - directed by friedman, about a gay couple facing the terminal stages of aids. winner of the grand jury prize and freedom of expression award at the sundance film festival in january ,
silverlake life
( which has its theatrical premiere friday at the vista theater in hollywood before a nationwide release through zeitgeist films) has been a hot topic of discussion ever since .
winner of over 10 international awards including the prix italia and the sundance grand jury prize, silverlake life: the view from here is an extraordinary video diary about living with aids. this landmark film documents, with guts and humor, the love and dedication of longtime companions tom joslin and mark massi. from the emotional challenge of living with a fatal illness to the frustration of maintaining daily routines, this is a powerful tale of love, commitment, mortality and the strength of the human spirit .
movies: aids, death and videotape:' silverlake life: the view from here' is a first - person slice of hiv - positive life, a love story about a gay couple' s final days together.' beyond aids,' says co - director peter friedman,' there' s a whole set of other issues the film deals with about gay relationships being... made invisible by society'
movies: aids, death and videotape:' silverlake life: the view from here' is a first - person slice of hiv - positive life, a love story about a gay couple' s final days together.' beyond aids,' says co - director peter friedman,' there' s a whole set of other issues the film deals with about gay relationships being... made invisible by society' - latimes
then, in 1993, i was on the sundance documentary jury and we screened silverlake life: the view from here. filmmaker tom joslin began to shoot the camcorder diary when he and his partner, mark massi, were diagnosed with hiv. when tom got too sick, mark took up the camera. in the end, one of tom' s former students, peter friedman, completed the film. a portrait of enduring romance and impending death, silverlake life blew me away. it showed me what it means to be married, and the meaning of what we do as documentarians .
david ehrenstein is the film critic for the advocate and the author of
the scorsese picture: the art & life of martin scorsese .
today, my own teenage son recognizes homophobia when he sees it. there has been a tremendous cultural shift since i was his age, fueled by the lgbt movement and brought to life by films like silverlake life .
the continuing political significance of silverlake life is brought into clearer focus in the new
epilogue
by friedman and elaine mayes included on the docurama dvd. another friend of joslin and massi, mayes recorded footage of mark' s decline after tom' s death, which is where the original version ends. it' s fitting that mark' s own life, death, and the loss of his lover are here given the sort of attention afforded tom' s experiences .
the happy fits take inspiration from alabama shakes on
grow back
and transform it into an unforgettable pop song .
the result is a glory of documentary - making and an important addition to the defiant stockpile of aids - inspired art being created in these modern plague years: silverlake life: the view from here is intimate and dry - eyed, charming and powerful, idiosyncratic and wrenching. it’s also, at times, blessedly comic and light. the grace of the film, which won the grand jury prize at this year’s sundance film festival, is in its ability to mix dying with living - deftly, wittily, superbly - so that we come to know these men as full in - dividuals, and come to honor their 22 years together, mourn their loss, and give thanks for this legacy. all of which probably sounds dangerously high - falutin. but don’t be frightened. the fact is, in silverlake life nothing human is alienating. a +
on 28 july of this year, the centers for disease control released new data that show a 2. 2 percent increase in aids cases in the united states in 2002. while this translates to only a little over 1, 000 new cases, the social and political significance is huge. it' s the first time since 1993 that aids cases have seen a significant increase, and suggests that many of our attempts to
manage
the disease (through safer - sex education, for example) may be failing. in the context of this resurgence, silverlake life: the view from here takes on added importance, as the film reminds us not only of the disease' s personal effects, but also, the many other, ongoing costs of aids in america and around the world .
silverlake life was named
one of the 10 best films of the year
by the los angeles times, usa today and the boston globe, and
one of the best films of the decade
by utne reader and the village voice. the film is one of 15 films in the pov 20th anniversary collection, a dvd set produced in partnership with docurama and available at urltoken and urltoken .
joslin was friedman' s co - director on the project - - a fact that sets
silverlake life
apart from any film or video about aids made to date. for at the climax of the documentary, joslin dies. on screen. this event was not only anticipated by joslin, but was intentionally woven by him - - with the help of his lover and co - cinematographer massi - - into the fabric of the film .
silverlake life also taught me a thing or two about filmmaking. for one thing, even in the grimmest of situations, there is joy and humor. in one of the film' s final scenes, mark makes a mess as he transfers his partner' s ashes to an urn :
tom, you' re all over the place !
silverlake life took me inside tom and mark' s lives and most intimate moments. that is documentary' s transformative power .
tied with children of fate: life and death in a sicilian family (1993) .
at the same time, silverlake life isn' t overly sentimental. what we can never forget is they are both dying. we watch tom at the doctor' s office, getting cat scans, listing off his herbal and pharmaceutical drug regime, and we see their bodies always in decline. joslin and friedman never shy away from showing the physical toll of aids. and in this, the film launches its most direct social and political challenge .
and so, in reflecting on my own work, racial diversity on - and off - screen means a lot more to me than proportionate numbers. i' ve seen how films from the inside can change consciousness, and move history. silverlake life was not only my role model for marriage, it went a long way in teaching me how to be human .
a documentary about two gay men as they live through their last months of life with aids .
a close friend of joslin' s, friedman is keenly aware of the precedents the film shatters, and the objections it is sure to raise from many viewers. still, the 35 - year - old filmmaker believes that the risks the film takes are both appropriate and necessary in the raising of public consciousness of aids as the epidemic enters its second decade with no end in sight .
the story of two coalitions - - act up and tag (treatment action group) - - whose activism and innovation turned aids from a death sentence into a manageable condition .
winner of the grand jury prize and the freedom of expression award at the 1993 sundance film festival, silverlake life had its national broadcast premiere on pbs' s pov series on june 15, 1993, and was broadcast the same night in france and germany. the film drove home the devastation of aids to millions of viewers with no direct experience of the epidemic. while looking unflinchingly at death, this day - to - day video diary also makes it clear that life and hope go on .
no one who sees [ the film ] through to its unexpectedly buoyant final scene will regret the time spent or be unchanged by the experience ,
said los angeles times critic kenneth turan .
sitting in a west hollywood cafe, speaking of the film with a mixture of professional pride and personal grief, friedman is well aware of the fact that the people he most wants to see
silverlake life
- - those still indifferent to aids - - are going to be the toughest sell. he also knows that many of those at the epicenter of the epidemic may want to pass on it as well. still, friedman is not ready to write off any potential viewer .
' silverlake life' involves two things this society tries to keep out of view - - death and homosexuality ,
he says .
i really don' t know what can be done about that resistance except to fight it by being honest. there' s so little honesty in this society when it comes to aids. on one level, there' s been this almost obsessive talking about it. but all that talk is about fear. people want to keep the disease at arm' s length. this film tries to break that down. this is a film about ordinary life. it shows what people have to go through on a daily basis with their illness - - going to the store, visiting the doctor, dealing with their parents, trying to keep their relationships going .
silverlake life details the quotidian difficulties of living with a disease that wastes you away from within. we are privy to how even the most mundane tasks are made nearly insurmountable by the ravages and exhaustion brought on by aids. at one point, tom films himself resting in the back of the couple' s car while mark runs their errands. he' s mightily pissed off at mark, who' s been promising to take him home, but keeps making just one more stop. while tom is obviously agitated, it' s also clear that he' s primarily frustrated by his increasing physical limitations and the ever - present specter of his own death, and that he' s displacing these fears into anger at mark .
boxer joe pendleton dies 50 years too soon due to a heavenly mistake, and is given a new life as a millionaire playboy .
you know ,
freidman continues ,
sundance was great, but i found it strange that the description of the film in the festival catalogue didn' t mention the fact that tom and mark were lovers for over 20 years. they were just described as being' two men.' that misses the whole point of the film really, because' silverlake life' is a love story. beyond aids, there' s a whole set of other issues the film deals with about gay relationships being unrecognized - - made invisible by society. that' s one of the things tom and mark were fighting all their lives .
set in the heart of los angeles' silverlake neighborhood, the film follows joslin and massi through their daily triumphs and sorrows, struggling valiantly to comfort and care for each other as even the simplest activities become excruciatingly difficult. everyday chores, medical treatments and even a stroll in the park require what joslin jokingly calls
a brave effort of physical dynamism .
but silverlake life isn' t an angry film. it' s actually a traditional romance, though a tragic one. throughout, we get a sense of the pair' s deep love (in one scene, before turning off the lights for the night, joslin films the couple' s goodnight ritual, as mark gently covers tom' s face with kisses, saving his lips for last; tom smiles, looks directly into the camera and says ,
i bet you don' t get goodnight kisses like that
) and their 22 - year history together. this is suggested in excerpts from joslin' s 1977 pbs documentary black star: autobiography of a close friend, chronicling tom' s coming out to his family, their meeting mark for the first time, and their perceptions of the men' s relationship .
although the aids crisis has been examined with varying degrees of success in films, television shows, plays, dance, paintings and even symphonies, it is safe to say that it has never been regarded with the up - close intensity of this slice of hiv - positive life. shot on video (and later transferred to film) in a first - person diary style ,
silverlake life
records the everyday struggles of lovers tom joslin and mark massi to keep body and soul together as long as they can, in a filmmaking style that conveys a gut - level intimacy that somehow avoids mere exhibitionism .
according to the centers for disease control statistics, 1993 marked the high point of number of aids cases in the united states (80, 010). it is hardly surprising, thinking back on the impact aids was having on u. s. culture and the controversies surrounding the epidemic, that 1993 was also something of a banner year for aids - related film. philadelphia and and the band played on were among the films released .
the
epilogue
also, importantly, reminds us that the aids epidemic is far from over. it' s a much needed wake - up call for the u. s. , where many can afford the pricey drugs necessary to slow the disease, and who like to think that aids mostly happens somewhere else, like africa or southeast asia. addressing an imagined
why the' epilogue'
question, friedman and mayes assert that aids still affects their own and their friends' lives. aids remains a global epidemic that is complicated by intellectual property laws and transnational pharmaceutical company money - grubbing .
shortly after he and his lover mark massi were diagnosed with full - blown aids, filmmaker tom joslin began a film and video diary of their experiences, including their inevitable (at the time) decline from the disease. after joslin' s death, longtime friend and former film student peter friedman was bequeathed the task of completing tom' s project. friedman edited down hundreds of hours of footage into a tight, pointed, and immensely affecting 100 - minute documentary .
when mark massi developed full - blown aids in 1989, filmmaker tom joslin set out to document his lover’s illness in a video diary. (joslin had already produced the documentary blackstar: autobiography of a close friend in 1976, about his homosexuality, in which massi appeared .) then joslin, too, became sick and the diary expanded to record the inexorably ebbing lives of both men - lives in which a walk in the park near their home in los angeles’ silver lake neighborhood or a trip to the market sapped their energy but not their love for each other. as joslin failed faster, massi took up the filming, recording the details - the feeding, the affectionate chats, the wasting flesh, the last visits from friends and family. he filmed clear through joslin’s death (in 1990) and cremation and memorial. then, as massi weakened (he died in 1991), peter friedman, a former filmmaking student of joslin’s, inherited the project to shoot, edit, and complete. joslin and massi were both 43 years old when they died .
the experimental documentary is about the early years of joslin and massi' s relationship and deals with joslin coming out to his family .
lee mcintyre' s' post - truth' is a history lesson and a call to action asking liberals to defend the concept of objective truth. but is it the best approach to the problem ?
all products featured were editorially selected. urltoken may receive a percentage of sales for items purchased from these links. © 2018 meredith corporation all rights reserved. use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms of use and privacy policy (your california privacy rights). | eu data subject requests
the clincher was a scene toward the end of tom' s life. we hear mark—the unwavering caregiver who is also in decline—in tears off camera as he films, berating himself for giving tom food that he could not keep down. i always perceived the vows ,
in sickness and in health ,
to be knee - jerk and saccharine, most likely a guise for wives serving their husbands. but tom and mark' s relationship embodied those vows in a profound and devastating way .
joslin, a filmmaker and instructor at the university of southern california, had turned the camera on himself and his family in the past. thus friedman, his former student, was not surprised that a super vhs camcorder had become an observant fixture in the joslin / massi household .
xolani, a lonely factory worker, travels to the rural mountains with the men of his community to initiate a group of teenage boys into manhood .
extraordinarily moving... no one who sees it through to its unexpectedly buoyant final scene will regret the time spent or be unchanged by the experience .
black salvation is a band that works the psychedelia into the hard rock with skill, and it makes for a very listenable album in uncertainty is bliss .
i met tom in 1976. he was my film teacher in my first year of college
says friedman, who attended hampshire college .
i know people always say that they had one teacher in their life that really affected them. for me, that person was tom. he was the first openly gay person i ever met .
in a culture where sexuality and pleasure are strictly regulated, and where aids is overcoded with morality and metaphor, confronting a complacent public with the physical reality of aids is a political act. tom joslin and mark massi knew this. at one point, at a resort in palm springs, we watch the couple swimming. the owner of the resort asks mark if he will keep his shirt on, as the kaposi' s sarcoma lesions that cover his torso, front and back, are disturbing the other guests. for a few more minutes, mark sits on a ledge by the pool, and flexes his back into the sun, further highlighting the lesions. tom asks what he is doing, and mark replies ,
i' m being political .
when peter friedman' s friends tom joslin and mark massi died, he accepted an extraordinary inheritance: 40 hours of videotape documenting the couple' s bout with aids. after 15 months of additional filming and editing, friedman emerged with one of the most wrenching and candid documents on love, commitment and mortality in the age of the epidemic .
the film captures everyday moments, drifting between memory, medical exams, a tortured family christmas and, always, the love between the two men edging out the utter sadness. there is a long take as tom films mark dancing with abandon to
take my heart away .
i couldn' t take my eyes away, as if i was looking through tom' s lens with the contentment of a parent gazing at her newborn .
want to share imdb' s rating on your own site? use the html below .
how did a film about two white men change me, a woman of color whose work centers on race and equality? my commitment to social justice filmmaking is shaped as much by my own failings. when i was a teenager growing up in los angeles, my friends would sometimes announce on a saturday night ,
we' re going to go to hollywood and roll some faggots .
i would think to myself, oh, that' s stupid—and i never took it any further. here i was, a politicized student activist, deeply involved in movements against racism. in a few years i would make a film about a hate crime, who killed vincent chin? . but violence towards gay men at the time was so normalized that i failed to grasp the outrage of their acts .
the film follows a new york city gay man, in a monogamous relationship, becoming a
buddy
or a volunteer friend to another gay man dying of aids and the friendship that develops .
it' s a first - person diary made by someone who wasn' t around to finish it ,
explained friedman .
and absence is really part of what the film is about. for me, that absence symbolizes the absence of people everywhere who aren' t where they should be, because of the devastation aids has brought to this country and to the world .
i was freaking out about getting married. i had carved out a decade as an indie filmmaker, and i valued my independence in all matters. i wasn' t going to be a traditional, self - sacrificing wife and mother like my own mom. i liked my life being all about me .
with jurassic world: fallen kingdom now in cinemas, we take a look at how imdb users rated the films of the franchise. plus, browse exclusive lego® jurassic world playsets, presented by lego .
after joslin died, friedman flew to los angeles to begin reviewing the footage with massi who was alone to deal with his own worsening condition. though committed to helping complete the film, massi was unable to bring himself to watch. instead, he sat nearby, filling friedman in on the details. massi died months later .
making a film about mark' s illness was a perfectly natural thing for tom to do because as an artist, his way of dealing with just about anything was to make a film about it ,
said friedman .
when tom became sick himself, he incorporated that into the film .
as each partner' s health waned, the other picked up the baton, in what the advocate called
a relay race between death and art .
i caught the last half of this movie on cable one night and was struck by just how morbid it was. even when one of the two victims is at his most deteriorated, the camera keeps going. the lingering shots of his corpse being uncovered and his concentration - camp figure being zipped into a body bag are both moving and depressing. don' t watch this movie if your already depressed. then again don' t watch it if your feeling really good .
fake death is ok in the movies ,
says filmmaker peter friedman .
people like to be scared as long as they know they' re safe. real death is ok too in terms of the nightly news - - piles of corpses of people that we' ll never know. but this is different .
jean - michel blais manages to transform simple motifs into weightless complex structures into (as paul simon noted in a different context )
angels in the architecture
.
exploding with captivating melodies, genre - splicing resourcefulness, and remarkable cohesion, automata ii exemplifies what makes between the buried and me so skillful, striving, and singular .
in a new interview, liz phair looks back on her first four albums, the legacy of exile in guyville, and being an inspiration to today' s female songwriters .
a closeted korean - american teenager takes a job at a korean spa to help his struggling family, only to discover an underground world of gay sex at the spa that both scares and excites him .
i was midway through the semester, and tom had never mentioned anything about his being gay. one day he invited me to see his film' blackstar: autobiography of a close friend.'
as friedman speaks in a clear and even voice, cut with an occasional tremble as he recalls specific incidents and emotions, his overall tone suggests that he hasn' t quite gotten used to talking about his friend in the past tense .
a wonderful, under - appreciated documentary about the lives of two homosexual men with aids. there is a prequel to this film, made in 1976 (long before they were ill), called blackstar at urltoken i am not affiliated with this film in any way. i just wanted more people to get a chance to see this wonderful film .
tom joslin was born on november 29, 1946 as thomas hancock joslin. he is known for his work on
( 1977). he died on july 1, 1990 in los angeles, california, usa .
hotel transylvania 3: summer vacation stars plan their dream summer getaways to some memorable movie settings .
explore popular and recently added tv series available to stream now with prime video .
some parts of this page won' t work property. please reload or try later .
lakeith stanfield and his sorry to bother you crew reveal their most soul - crushing jobs in our freewheeling interview .
tempers fray and true selves are revealed when a heterosexual is accidentally invited to a homosexual party .
a weekend trip between friends takes a sudden turn, making them each question what love is and what it means to them .
4 of 27 people found this review helpful. was this review helpful to you? yes no | report this
sorry, we just need to make sure you' re not a robot. for best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies .
html public
- / / w3c / / dtd xhtml 1. 0 transitional / / en
urltoken
shortly after he and his lover mark massi were diagnosed with full - blown aids, filmmaker tom joslin began a film and video diary of their experiences .
visual artist / silos frontman walter salas - humara preps new album, walterio, which speaks to his punk / roots origins .
washington' s album son of pain is a lost treasure of r & b; an album rich in bluesy southern drawls, honeyed harmonies and street - smart rhythms .
australian folk duo luluc follows their breakout album passerby with a more ambitious sound that inspires reverence and awe on sculptor .
an unexpected collaboration between joseph arthur and peter buck produces a great summer record of noisy, dark garage - pop .
© 1999 - 2018 urltoken. all rights reserved. popmatters is wholly independently owned and operated .
renee tajima - pena is ida' s filmmaker - in - residence. her most recent film, no más bebés, aired on pbs' independent lens in february.
silverlake life : the view from here is a 1993 documentary film by director peter friedman ( not the actor of the same name ) and tom joslin . shot with a hand-held video camera , the film documents the final months of a relationship between two gay men — tom joslin ( november 29 , 1946 - july 1 , 1990 ) and his partner , mark massi ( died july 1 , 1991 ) — as they both struggle to deal with aids . the journey that tom and mark face as two partners dying of aids is to demonstrate realistically how their lives changed . everyday tasks became chores until the last day of tom 's life came upon them . the honest and realistic portrayal allows the audience to see behind the scenes of a person affected by hiv . the film won several awards including a 1994 peabody award . it shared the 1993 grand jury prize at the sundance film festival with the film children of fate : life and death in a sicilian family . 
silverlake life: the view from here is a 1993 documentary film by director peter friedman (not the actor of the same name) and tom joslin. shot with a hand-held video camera, the film documents the final months of a relationship between two gay men — tom joslin (november 29, 1946 - july 1, 1990) and his partner, mark massi (died july 1, 1991) — as they both struggle to deal with aids. the journey that tom and mark face as two partners dying of aids is to demonstrate realistically how their lives changed. everyday tasks became chores until the last day of tom's life came upon them. the honest and realistic portrayal allows the audience to see behind the scenes of a person affected by hiv. the film won several awards including a 1994 peabody award. it shared the 1993 grand jury prize at the sundance film festival with the film children of fate: life and death in a sicilian family.
silverlake life: the view from here is a 1993 documentary film by director peter friedman (not the actor of the same name) and tom joslin. shot with a hand-held video camera, the film documents the final months of a relationship between two gay men — tom joslin (november 29, 1946 - july 1, 1990) and his partner, mark massi (died july 1, 1991) — as they both struggle to deal with aids. the journey that tom and mark face as two partners dying of aids is to demonstrate realistically how their lives changed. everyday tasks became chores until the last day of tom's life came upon them. the honest and realistic portrayal allows the audience to see behind the scenes of a person affected by hiv. the film won several awards including a 1994 peabody award. it shared the 1993 grand jury prize at the sundance film festival with the film children of fate: life and death in a sicilian family.