Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Thomas loves hot weather, high mountains, and fresh sushi, and spends most of his spare time trying to come to terms with what he calls "the neurosis of nostalgia", the innate power of all things yesterday. A graduate of Reed College, he has spent three of the past five years in the former Soviet Union, most recently helping publish a small weekly magazine in the South Caucasus, where he is destined to return.

Form and Dissidence:
The Story of Jazz in the USSR
Digital video
20 min.

The history of jazz in the USSR chronicles the epic struggle of Soviet musicians to establish as revolution in the face of the regime's immense efforts to repress popular culture. Throughout its evolution from a borrowed American dance craze to a capitalist bourgeois threat to a mainstream art form, jazz behind the Iron Curtain resisted decades of Stalinism's political legacy to emerge as a champion of artistic expression in the USSR. This film is the story of Soviet jazz as revolution in its fight for legitimacy and in its struggle to find its own voice.

Revolutions Per Minute
16mm film, color
6 minutes

The advent of digital sound ended the era of vinyl records. Or did it? Revolutions Per Minute explores the fate of vinyl in the twenty-first century, it's seductive quality, and the reason it survives today, despite all odds.

Train
Co-directed by Thomas Burns and Eriko Yamato
Digital video
6 minutes

Locomotive engineers face the threat of unavoidable track fatalities every day, both on the job and off. Nevertheless, most engineers love their work and it is precisely this commitment that compels them to endure the extreme stress and trauma that characterizes life behind the wheel of a railroad engine. Train examines the testimonies of several veteran engineers and contrasts our experience of riding trains with the often gruesome reality of driving them.

Cowboy Poker
16mm, black and white
3 minutes

Cowboy Poker is a portrait of an American bullfighter whose weekly dances with rodeo bucking bulls has saved the lives of countless bullriders. Often mistaken for rodeo clowns, rodeo bullfighters make a living facing down death and learn a thing or two in the process.