Tom E. Brown

BIOGRAPHIE

Tom made his first film at the age of 10 when he picked up his dad’s 8mm movie camera, a superhero cape, and a handful of smoke bombs—the beginning of his career as a self-taught filmmaker. Tom never went to film school. In fact, he dropped out of high school. At age 18, he received an AIDS diagnosis and was given no more than three years to live by the family doctor. Lacking the resources to deal with this, he simply carried on with life, making short films as often as possible. Since then—37 years ago—Tom's films have been featured at the American Museum of Natural History, the Walker Art Center, and the Guggenheim. His work has been screened at hundreds of film festivals and televised internationally. He wrote and directed IFC short film favorites DAS CLOWN, DON’T RUN JOHNNY, and RUBBER GLOVES. Tom, a veteran of the Sundance Film Festival, wrote and directed the dramatic comedy PUSHING DEAD—a love story between a man and his disease. The film was a Sundance Institute/Rockefeller Foundation-supported feature starring James Roday, Robin Weigert, and Danny Glover. It screened at over 50 film festivals, garnering ten best-feature audience and jury awards along the way—and a few notable awards for the actors too. PUSHING DEAD was released in North America in 2018. Tom has given lectures across the country (including at SUNY Purchase, Yale, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the Human Rights Campaign HQ), focusing on his experience with chronic illness and how he finds the funny in the ache. He is an active advisor at SFFILM's FilmHouse and loves mentoring residents. He lives in San Francisco’s Tenderloin with his scrappy little dog, Charlie.

FILMOGRAPHIE