Filmmakers

Tom Whiteside, a native of Roanoke, Virginia, has lived in North Carolina most of his life. An artist and a film historian, he has been making, curating, and exhibiting film since 1977. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures in 1979. His interest in local and regional film history has focused primarily on two projects, "The Lost Colony Film" (directed by Elizabeth Grimball, Roanoke Island, 1921) and "Movies of Local People" (made by H. Lee Waters in 118 towns, 1936 to 1942). Tom has made more than 30 experimental films and videos, including landscapes, direct animation, and radical re-edits. He was a Visiting Artist in the North Carolina Community College system from 1984 to 1988, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California in 1989. He served as an Arts Administration Fellow in the Media Arts section of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC in 1990. His work has been exhibited three times in the triennial North Carolina Artists Exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Founder and director of Durham Cinematheque, he has curated unique film programs on smoking ("Nicotine Cinema") and marriage and divorce ("Till This Us Do Part," "Marriage and Other Accidents," and "Let No One Put Us Under.") Tom lives in Durham, North Carolina.