Tom Chomont

My dear friend Tom Chomont, a great experimental filmmaker, died on June 28, 2010 of Parkinson’s Disease.  Tom’s disease was so bad that some days when I would visit him it would literally take 3 hours for him to get himself out of bed or pull himself off the floor.  He was vehement about refusing help and all a visitor could do was to wait helplessly for the carbidopa-levodopa to take effect.  I could never film him on one of his really bad days.  It seemed too intrusive.  But here he is on two relatively good days.  First on October 3, 2005 when I went to visit him at his wretched little slum apartment on Elizabeth Street, which I suppose is technically in SoHo, but, since he’d lived there since the 1960s seemed more a part of the Lower East Side.  Then on October 8th he was supposed to have a screening at Le Petit Versailles, the famous garden and performance space on East 2nd Street and Avenue C.  The rain was so awful that evening that the screening had to be moved upstairs to Jack Waters’ and Peter Cramer’s apartment.  This is some footage I shot before the screening.  Among those present were the filmmakers Robert Beavers, Marguerite Paris & M.M. Serra.

04:47   Peter Cramer

05:21   Kate Huh

06:01   Jack Waters

06:09   Dr. Samay Jain, Tom’s neurologist

06:40   Nelson Gonzalez

06:55   Robert Beavers

06:48   Marguerite Paris & Tom Chomont

06:50   M.M. Serra