In an apartment on 12th Street, a chatty old woman sits in a cluttered room of sheet music that very few people remember. She tinkles occasionally at the piano as she speaks - any interview with the eccentric Mimi Stern-Wolfe is always punctuated by music. The Benson salons, as Mimi calls them, were a regular meeting of artists and composers in a downtown Manhattan loft owned by Eric Benson, her dear friend and musical collaborator. At this loft, writers and composers showcased new classical and populist musical works and an artistic community thrived. Amongst them were Chris DeBlasio, Robert Chesley and Kevin Oldham. When the HIV/AIDS epidemic swept through New York, and indeed the world in the early 1980s, each were infected and the majority of people who attended the soirees, including the composers themselves, were dead by the early 1990s. After these deaths, Mimi devoted much of her life to The Benson AIDS Series, an annual concert of works by composers who were lost to HIV/AIDS, which she performs on World AIDS Day. Directed by Rohan Spong, All the Way Through Evening follows Mimi as she prepares for one such concert. Her interviews recount the glory days at the Benson Salons, the initial awareness of HIV/AIDS and provide a character portrait of some of the original composers. The film also includes touching interviews with some of the surviving family members and musical collaborators of these men.
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Screening with the short film "Shopping."
A poetic journey of two women in search of love in an ever changing world.
