Until his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, Tom Rubnitz produced short, humourous videotapes featuring some of New York’s most outrageously talented musicians, artists and drag queens. Influenced by mass media entertainment, Rubnitz crafted hilarious videos which simultaneously celebrated and parodied pop culture’s bountiful energy and inventiveness. As Tom said, “I wanted to make things beautiful, funny and positive—escapes that you could just get into and laugh through. That was really important to me. I felt like good could triumph over evil.” We hope that this compilation will extend Tom’s critically important, uplifiting and ground-breaking work to new audiences who have never had the privilege or pure pleasure of witnessing these exhilarating videos.
The quintessential New York underground collection of film/video artiste, Tom Rubnitz. In this compilation Rubnitz takes a bite out of the Big Apple and spits it out in a wild kaleidoscope of unequivocal camp and hallucinogenic color.
“Inimitable and ineffable, Tom Rubnitz’s glitter-dusted videos distill the sensibility of a generation of TV babies whose venue of choice was the Pyramid Club rather than the Whitney Museum.”
—Village Voice
