For the past ten years, Jack Walsh’s work in film and video has explored issues of class identity and gay sexuality. In Working Class Chronicle (1985) Walsh’s records of personal life collides with evocations of historical events to examine ideologies of the fifties and sixties. Present Tense (1987) defines the filmmaker’s identity through the interplay of power relationships suggested by historical, personal, and cultural source materials. In his most recent work, Dear Rock (1993), he composes a posthumous fan letter to Rock Hudson. This bittersweet ode, set against a backdrop of kitsch and painful ironies, contemplates the stigma of AIDS within the arena of institutionalized homophobia. Jack Walsh lives in San Francisco where he currently works as producer of “The Living Room Festival” series on KQED. In addition to his own work, Walsh has been producer for numerous independent films and videos and has been a longtime champion of experimental film in New York and the Bay Area.
Thursday, March 10, 1994
Class and Sexuality
Film & Video by Jack Walsh
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts