Amy Taubin is the Video and Film Curator at The Kitchen in New York. She is also a well known critic; her writing appeared in the Soho News for six years and she remains a regular contributor to the Village Voice. A filmmaker whose works have been shown at independent showcases in New York and around the country, Taubin is also a video artist, an actress (she appeared in the films and live works of Richard Foreman, Michael Snow, Yvonne Rainer and others), and a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Un Chant d'Amour
Jean Genet based his 1950 film, Un Chant d'Amour, on his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, written from his prison cell during the war. (Genet spent his entire adult life in and out of prisons on theft convictions.) Our Lady of the Flowers began as a record of the private fantasies of a homosexual prisoner in solitary confinement; Un Chant d'Amour is a cinematic poem of an imprisoned homosexual's love and longing. A landmark in poetic and erotic cinema, it was produced by Genet's friend Nico Papadakis, and though it was made in 35mm by professional cameramen, with actors and specially built sets, it was not intended to be shown to general audiences. Rather, a few prints were to be made for private collections. Cahiers du Cinema has called Un Chant d'Amour “a song of man's love soaring above the sexual ghetto of prison's non-existence.”