Jean Carlomusto

Jean Carlomusto (b. 1959-, Queens, NY) is a New York filmmaker, AIDS activist, and interactive media artist. She produced and directed HBO's Emmy nominated documentary, Larry Kramer in Love & Anger, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. Her works have been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. She was an early pioneer in documenting the AIDS crisis. As the founder of the Multimedia Unit at Gay Men's Health Crisis, she created the television series Living with AIDS. She was a founding member of DIVA TV (a video affinity group of ACT UP) and a member of the Testing The Limits Video Collective.

Jean Carlomusto graduated from Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park, Queens, New York in 1977. She earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in Film from C.W. Post in 1981. She earned her M.P.S. in Interactive Telecommunications from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Jean Carlomusto is currently Director of the Television Center and Professor of Media Arts at LIU Post Long Island University in Brookville, New York. Prior to her academic career, Carlomusto has played a major role in media production for AIDS activists groups. Her AIDS activist work began in 1986, while working as a teaching assistant at New York University, assisting student teams in a class making educational videos for local organizations. When Joey Lianti from the Gay Men's Health Crisis came to her class to request a video, and none of the students wanted to work with him, the shame of her class' reaction drove Carlomusto to volunteer for the Gay Men's Health Crisis to increase awareness about AIDS and build empathy for those with the illness. She began as the projectionist for their safe sex workshops, then left her teaching job at NYU to start up the Multimedia Production Unit in order to produce a weekly television program called Living with AIDS. This was the longest running of the Gay Men's Health Crisis television series, with guest videographers including Marina Alvarez, Sarah Cawley, Ronald Dodd, Andres J. Figueroa, Laura Ganis, Alexandra Juhasz, Ray Navarro, Steven Okazaki, Catherine Saalfield, Kristin Thomas, and Paul Zakrzewski. These videographers not only made safe sex videos and educational films for healthy living with AIDS, but also gathered oral histories and interviews from diverse group of people suffering from the disease.

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