Tom Joslin

Tom Joslin (November 29, 1946 – July 1, 1990) was an American independent filmmaker and teacher best known for Silverlake Life: The View from Here, a video diary about living and dying with AIDS. His earlier works include Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend (1976) and The Architecture of the Mountains (1978, released posthumously in 2012).

1946–1974: Early life Thomas Hancock Joslin was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, in 1946, the son of Charles Sumner Joslin, a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, and Mary Hall Kimball Joslin, a legal secretary in Boston. His parents operated the Turnpike Racquet Club in Plainville, Massachusetts, one of New England's first indoor tennis facilities. Joslin attended Cumberland High School in Rhode Island, where he was active in the Thespian Society and performed in several school plays.

He began making films at age 14, using a Super 8mm camera to recreate scenes from James Bond and Alfred Hitchcock films. He also collaborated frequently with classmate David Macaulay, who would later become a noted author and illustrator of children's books. and an unfinished documentary on the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. In 1968, he participated in the Flaherty Film Seminar, a weeklong program organized by Frances Flaherty in memory of her husband, documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, held at their family farm in Vermont. Joslin later described this event as a turning point in his career, marking a shift from narrative storytelling toward documentary and self-reflective filmmaking. He also dedicated his first feature to Willard Van Dyke, then director of the Flaherty Film Seminar. According to writer Bo Huston, "their famous story was that when they were lovers in college, Mark sat on a window-sill, crying hysterically, and stated that if Tom didn't love him, he'd jump." Joslin later earned an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, while Massi worked in video production at the New England Center for Continuing Education. They also ran a macrobiotic VW van, The Foot and Mouth, at UNH, and lived as a gay couple in Alchemedia, a commune they established in Barrington, New Hampshire.

The first half presents a portrait of Joslin's family history, primarily narrated by his parents and brothers, tracing their upper-middle-class origins from the 19th century to the director's childhood, which took place during the post-World War II period. The second half explores themes such as gay identity and family rejection through interviews with the same family members, who attempt to challenge the legitimacy of Tom and Mark's relationship.

Blackstar was first screened in 1976 at Harvard-Radcliffe in an early work-print stage. In Gay Community News, Michael Bronski described the film as "a glowing reminder that art and politics are not only compatible but intrinsic to one another", calling it "one of the best films about us that has yet been made". the RISD Auditorium In 1980, it was broadcast on WGBH’s Cold Nights, a showcase of independent filmmakers from the Boston area.

Although Blackstar was not widely known at the time, queer film historian Thomas Waugh later recognized it as one of the first gay autobiographical films, alongside Curt McDowell’s Confessions (1972) or Jan Oxenberg’s Home Movie (1973)

1976–1981: The Architecture of the Mountains After Blackstar, Joslin was offered a teaching position in the Film and Photography area at Hampshire College. The search committee included photographers Jerome Liebling and Elaine Mayes, who later became a close friend of the couple. At Hampshire, Joslin taught courses ranging from 8mm and 16mm film workshops, to a survey of 1960s cinema, as well as a seminar on LGBTQ+ film representation called Film Image-Gay, which featured historian and activist Vito Russo as a guest speaker. He also developed The Transformative Vision, a course inspired by Jose Argüelles’ book of the same name. His students included Peter Friedman, Bo Huston, Ken Burns, Victor Fresco and Ken Levin.

In response to Argüelles’ book, Joslin began a second project, The Architecture of the Mountains, a more experimental work that would explore themes related to human consciousness, perception and self-reflexivity. Filming took place at Joslin and Massi's apartment in Florence, Massachusetts, and the Hampshire College campus. The project included time-lapse shots using Tom's 16mm Bolex, Joslin also designed a device to wake him during the night so he could record his dreams on camera.

Filmmaker Abraham Ravett noted that ‘‘Joslin was frustrated with The Architecture of the Mountains when he took a sabbatical from Hampshire to go to Los Angeles in 1980’’. In 2009, Ravett obtained Levin’s permission to work with the footage and, together with students Ben Balcom and Sam Shapiro, produced a posthumous cut titled Architecture of Mountains, based on Joslin’s original proposal, Argüelles’ book, and their interpretation of the material.

1981–1993: Hollywood and Silverlake Life: The View From Here In 1981, Joslin and Massi moved to Los Angeles to pursue a Hollywood career. He later worked on projects such as John Erman's Eleanor, First Lady of the World, Robert Redford's The Milagro Beanfield War and Victor Fresco and Matthew Fassberg's TV series New Monkees.

During this time, he co-founded the Primary Colors Company with screenwriter Selise E. Eiseman to create independent films and TV series. Their screenplay Most Likely To Succeed was selected as one of eight feature projects at the Sundance Institute's 1985 Script Development Project. From 1986 to 1990, Joslin also taught in the University of Southern California's undergraduate Filmic Writing Program.

Silverlake Life: The View From Here After Joslin and Massi were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, Joslin drafted a proposal for his final project: a six-episode, half-hour television series titled Silverlake Life: The View From Here. According to scholar Gabriel Tonelo, these elements would also include ‘‘visual documentation (photos and film) of Silver Lake [...]; the incorporation of his previous autobiographical work (Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend and the unfinished Architecture of Mountains); and clips from different television programs and feature films, such as Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Sleeper (Woody Allen, 1973), and Ben Casey (ABC, 1961–1966)’’.

Joslin used a Super VHS camera to record fragments of their daily lives, including doctor's visits, neighborhood walks, a Christmas family visit to New Hampshire, a spiritual healing session at Miracle Manor in Desert Hot Springs, and extra footage of the 1990 L.A. Marathon. After Joslin died on July 1, 1990, Massi continued filming. In his diaries, he expressed his willingness to complete Silverlake Life: "I want to somehow get it down somewhere what it’s like having AIDS. Wonder if I can do it in Tom’s tape. I have thought of changing the tape and making it ‘our’ view. I have a story to tell, too. I’m the widower with AIDS." Massi died on July 11, 1991, before he could witness the finished film.

Release and reception In 1991, Peter Friedman inherited forty hours of partially edited footage from Silverlake Life. Over the next fifteen months, he edited this material between Marseilles and New York, using Joslin's notes and existing footage to shape it into a 99-minutes video-diary film. The film premiered in Los Angeles at the Vista Theatre on March 19, 1993 David Ehrenstein

Silverlake Life had its national broadcast debut on on PBS' POV on June 15, 1993, for which it won a Peabody Award

Silverlake Life also received other major awards, including the Teddy Award at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, It was named one of the "10 Best Films of the Year" by The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and The Boston Globe. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum described it as "a powerful and rewarding work that fully repays one for the pain of watching it for its impact as a love story, its nobility, and its candor about coping with AIDS in today’s world". Scholar Susanna Egan noted that Silverlake Life achieved "what no conventional autobiography has ever achieved, the making of autobiography beyond the closure of death".

Death Tom Joslin died of AIDS at his home in Silver Lake on July 1, 1990. A memorial service took place at All Saints Episcopal Church in Highland Park. The film was released in VHS, LaserDisc and DVD.

In 2021, Blackstar was newly restored in 4K by IndieCollect and the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, after a long period out of distribution.

Filmography