Jim Hubbard: Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a new collaboration between filmmaker Jim Hubbard (United in Anger: A History of ACT UP) and composers Chris Cochrane and Kevin Bud Jones. Hubbard has been commissioned by the New York City AIDS Memorial to create a new experimental film about death and memory, utilizing newly shot footage as well as footage culled from his extensive archive, built over the past 40 years. Images of dead friends appear ghost-like in a window, overlooking the industrial and partially gentrified Bronx. Shots of Hubbard’s deceased lover, Roger Jacoby, are intercut with footage shot by Hubbard around the world, placing Roger’s body in locations he was never able to go during his lifetime. Apparitions of safe sex are abstracted in order to explore its joys, frustrations, and strangeness. Recollections of friends who have died restore an emotional connection to the devastation of the AIDS crisis, a reminder that life persists despite loss and change. The music will be performed live by Chris Cochrane and Kevin Bud Jones, with Jim Pugliese and the screening will take place at the LGBT Community Center (208 West 13 Street, NYC) in Room 101.

About the Artists

Jim Hubbard has been making films since 1974. United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, a feature-length documentary on ACT UP has won numerous awards and played at over 150 museums, universities, and film festivals worldwide. Sarah Schulman and he completed 187 interviews as part of the ACT UP Oral History Project. He co-founded MIX - the New York Queer Experimental Film Festival. Under the auspices of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, he created the AIDS Activist Video Collection at the New York Public Library. He has curated programs at the Guggenheim Museum and MoMA. Among his 25 other films are Elegy in the Streets (1989), Two Marches (1991), The Dance (1992), and Memento Mori (1995). His films are in the collection of MoMA and Harvard University and have been shown at the Warhol Museum, ICA Boston, the Harvard Film Archive, Tokyo University, the Zürcher Museen, mumok (Vienna), Mudam (Luxembourg), the Berlin Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and LGBT Film Festivals in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, and Torino, among others. Memento Mori won the Ursula for Best Short Film at the Hamburg Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in 1995 and is being preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

Chris Cochrane is a Brooklyn-based musician, guitarist, improviser, noise maker, and composer. Chris has played with Zeena Parkins, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Billy Martin, Eszter Balint, Stew, James Chance, Mike Patton, Henry Kaiser, Andrea Centazzo, Annie Gosfield, Tim Hodgkinson, Miguel Frasconi, Richard Buckner, Davey Williams, Ladonna Smith and Jim Pugliese and many others. He has composed music for Ishmael Houston-Jones, Dennis Cooper, Nayland Blake, Neil Greenberg, and Circus Amok. He was in the bands No Safety and Curlew, and is currently working on several projects: Exacation with John Thayer, Nick Jozwiak, and Shogo Nagai and Alphawhore with Gordon Beeferman and Kevin Shea, and numerous others.

Kevin Bud Jones, a native Philadelphian, has lived in NYC since 1975. While working as a cinematographer, he also designed lights for music, dance, and theater, and composed music for film and stage productions. Since the 80s, Kevin has performed as part of the downtown music scene as a guitarist and synthesist with Dog Eat Dog, and later Collapsible Shoulder, with Chris Cochrane, Kato Hideki, and Brian Chase. In 2018 he composed music for a pair of concerts by Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers dance company, and last year co-composed a score with Chris Cochrane for Linda Austin’s dance performance at Judson Memorial Church.

Jim Pugliese is a drummer, percussionist, composer, and international recording artist with over 200 recordings of Jazz, Rock, Avant Garde, and Film music. He has performed as a guest artist with The New York Philharmonic; in numerous new music and jazz festivals in Europe, Japan, and the USA; and he has toured and recorded with The Philip Glass Ensemble, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Bobby Previte, Anthony Coleman, Zeena Parkins, and many more. His CD Live @ Issue Project Room NYC was listed as Best New Release of 2008 in All About Jazz NY. Currently, Jim is recording, touring, and performing with his collaborative band Italian Doc Remix, 75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band, and his trio Yimba Roda.