In I hung back, held fire, danced and lied Kalin confronts loss, intimacy and estrangement. This visually arresting piece is constructed of Super-8 fragments that document familiar and foreign spaces, lovers and strangers. Rapidly intercut with these images are brief glimpses of names of individuals who have died from AIDS — some famous, others not so well known — that further notions of anonymity and immortality. Kalin's imagery serves as an 'imprint' of the living world, preserving for an unknown viewer personal experiences that have already fled.

Kalin concludes with a quote from The Black Boy Looks on the White Boy by James Baldwin: "I hung back, held fire, dance and lied. I was not going to come crawling out of my ruined house, all bloody, no, baby, sing no sad songs for me."