Moving from the tourist image to the found image, pastoral landscape to industrial landscape, the idealized object of desire to the "real," PRESENT TENSE explores obsession, desire, and consumption in the contemporary world. Centered on personal experience, the film uses the modern state to examine issues of gender, class, genocide, torture, and surveillance.

"PRESENT TENSE weaves together visual and aural contrasts of first-person narration, painting portraiture, travel diaries, and found footage, in a riveting appropriation of the filmmaker's gay identity. In the film, Walsh defines this self through the interplay of power relationships drawn from historical, personal, and cultural contexts by examining specific critical issues including physical attraction and death, militarism and annihilation, family relationships, and political community." - Jon Gartenberg, Museum of Modern Art

Awards: First Place, Experiments in Form, SF Int'l Film Festival, 1988; Grand Prize, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1987.