Professor Tom Kalin and Alumna Lisa Cholodenko '97 on Sundance Film Festival Panel, 'Barbed Wire Kisses Redux'
Professor Tom Kalin and Film Alumna Lisa Cholodenko ‘97 recently participated in a panel discussion for the Sundance Film Festival entitled The Big Conversation: Barbed Wire Kisses Redux.
Kalin’s acclaimed film Swoon received prizes at the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival, and the Gotham Independent Film Awards. Savage Grace premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, screened worldwide, and was named “top ten” by Artforum. Kalin’s films as a producer include I Shot Andy Warhol and Go Fish. He recently directed the first episode of Pride, a six part documentary series for the FX Networks and produced by Killer Films and Refinery29. The series conveys the history and diversity of LGBTQ civil rights in America. Kalin’s episode, which concerns the 1950s, will air later in 2021. He is also a founding member of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury.
Cholodenko lives in Los Angeles and writes and directs film and television. Her feature films High Art, Laurel Canyon, and The Kids Are All Right, which received several Golden Globes and Academy Award nominations, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Cholodenko got her start in film as assistant editor on Boyz n the Hood and Used People. After earning her MFA at Columbia University, Cholodenko wrote and directed several acclaimed short films. In 2019, Unbelievable, a mini series for which Cholodenko served as an executive producer and director of three episodes, received a total of four Golden Globes nominations.
The panel was a return to and reflection on the original 1992 Sundance Film Festival panel, Barbed Wire Kisses. The 1992 panel gathered preeminent LGBTQ+ artists to discuss their work, and it was at that panel that academic and critic B. Ruby Rich coined the term “New Queer Cinema.” Rich wrote extensively on these films and those that followed. This year’s Barbed Wire Kisses Redux panel, which was part of Sundance’s series of talks entitled, The Big Conversation, offered a chance for these artists to come together once again to not only reflect on that landmark moment, but to also imagine the way forward together.
Rich, who chaired the 1992 panel, opened the discussion, addressing the unique historical moment in which the original panel took place. “At that time, January ’92, we were in the 12th year of the Reagan-Bush regime. We had twelve years of Republican rule and we were still in the white-hot heat of the AIDS epidemic. There was not yet a cure. The cocktail would not be invented for about another five years, and it was a time of immense despair and immense energy. I think that this panel marked a moment when people began to take stock of what was going on, what was happening to the queer community.”
Kalin, who was one of the original panelists in 1992, shared his reflections on that previous moment and its personal significance to him: “That moment was urgent and angry, and we felt like we could make a difference. Films still have that capacity, and I still feel like we have the energy. We are really in need of that kind of optimism and clarifying anger directed towards a solution.” Kalin sees this energy present in contemporary films that, in their form and content, challenge the status quo. “I find that exciting, but how we make it now in our own work, I think that’s an act of constant reinvention.”
Cholodenko joined for the second half of the panel. She talked about the influences that impacted her as an up-and-coming filmmaker at the time. “I have to say, I think it all started with seeing Jane Campion’s Sweetie. I was traveling, I happened to see it. I was young, I was deciding to become a filmmaker, and that really kind of sealed the deal for me. Because I could finally feel myself in the director’s chair as a woman, saying something that I felt at the time was dangerous and provocative.” Cholodenko would eventually bring her first feature, High Art, to Sundance, where she would win the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Before that though, she decided to pursue an MFA at Columbia. “It was a really expensive roll of the dice to go to film school, so I told myself, ‘Lisa, you’re going to sit down, you’re going to write your own story. You’re going to be passionate, do something you want to do, and write a feature.’” Cholodenko has since written and directed several films, in addition to her extensive work directing television.
Other panel guests included Andrew Ahn, Gregg Araki, Cheryl Dunye, Silas Howard, Isaac Julien, and Rose Troche. To listen to the complete conversation, watch the panel here.