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Filmmaker, screenwriter, producer and gay-rights activist Tom Kalin is a relatively new, but rapidly rising figure in contemporary gay cinema. His debut feature Swoon (1992) was a compelling, highly stylized, even a tad surreal look at a notorious 1924 murder case in which two wealthy homosexuals murdered a 14-year-old-boy just for the thrill. Infamous defense attorney Clarence Darrow defended the two. The story was filmed twice before, once by Hitchcock as Rope (1948) and then by Richard Fleischer as Compulsion (1959), but Kalin's was the first of them not to dance around the killers' homosexuality. Prior to making Swoon, Kalin earned a name for himself scripting and directing short art films such as Puppets and They Are Lost to Vision Altogether, a film that has appeared at many international festivals along with another Kalin film News from Home. Kalin has done much to educate the public about AIDS.