TOM  OF  FINLAND  FOUNDATION

Tips Of The Hat And Odds & Ends:

Thank you to MSC London, BLUF, and The Backstreet for supporting TOM and his Foundation. They presented an informal Meet & Greet for Durk on September 6. "You are keeping TOM’s legacy alive!" — Durk Dehner, president & cofounder, Tom of Finland Foundation

Dome Karukoski, in Toronto with Heart of a Lion, is now set to direct his first English-language film, a biopic of groundbreaking artist Tom of Finland.

Tom of Finland was famous for his groundbreaking sexually explicit drawings of muscular men; his work is in collections at MoMA and LACMA.

Producers Helsinki-filmi have secured exclusive rights to the entire archives and all images from the artist. “We are working quite closely with the Foundation,” producer Aleksi Bardy told Screen. “It was very important for them that we wanted to respect the copyrights for his work. He has been pirated so much over the years.

“I think it’s a story of liberation, it’s a very universal story,” Bardy added.

Casting of an international actor will be announced in early 2014 and the film will start shooting in December 2014. “We don’t want to make a niche film,” Bardy said. “This is a universal story and we need an actor of a certain level.”

This will be the only authorized biopic of the artist as cleared by the Tom of Finland Foundation.

More info on TOM's Blog.

He is also Mr. Fetish Finland 2013

More of his images are on TOM's Blog

"The work of legendary gay erotic artist Gengoroh Tagame (?????. 1964-) has been notoriously hard to track down outside of Japan. That this master’s work should languish in obscurity felt like an injustice, and it was part of the reason that Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd and I decided to put together Tagame’s first English-language collection of comics, The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame."

— Graham Kolbeins

Much more, including photos, on TOM's Blog

Durk Dehner (Tom of Finland Foundation) and Dominic Johnson (Queen Mary, University of London) gave a contemporary perspective of the context in which Tom of Finland was working, from his peers. Part of ICAs Keep Your Timber Limber.

More photos on TOM's Blog

Finnish Minister of Culture & Sports
Waves A Rainbow Flag

Finnish Minister of Culture & Sports, Paavo Arhinmäki, waved a rainbow flag during the World Track & Field Championships in Moscow at Luznikin Stadium. He openly brought into the limelight solidarity on behalf of sexual equality. He took two flags, one of which was Finland's blue flag. The other was the gay community's rainbow flag.

Also: Kseniya Ryzhova and Tatyana Firova, two members of Russia's women's 4x400 relay team, defied their nation's ban on "homosexual propaganda" when they kissed on the podium during the presentation ceremony for their gold medals, also at the World Track & Field Championships in Moscow.

More (in Finnish)

TOM
On YouTube

TOM OF FINLAND (Finnish, 1920 – 1991),
Untitled (Detail), 1973, Graphite on paper, 11” x 17”, ToFF #73.01
© 1973 Tom of Finland Foundation

The artist has influenced us all
and how that expresses itself is an individual thing.

TomofFinlandsmen

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