Gustavo Antonio "Tav" Falco, born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an American musician, filmmaker, actor, and author. Falco grew up in rural southwest Arkansas. In the mid-1970s, Falco started Televista, a nonprofit art-action video group, and trained under photographer William Eggleston. On September 28, 1974, Falco filmed a short documentary of blues artist R.L. Burnside performing in Como, Mississippi. Chilton teamed up with Falco after being impressed by a performance of the song “Bourgeois Blues” at The Orpheum Theatre in Memphis. The two founded the rock and roll band Tav Falco's Panther Burns in 1979. The band's debut album, Behind The Magnolia Curtain, was released on Rough Trade Records. Falco moved to New York in 1981 and released Blow Your Top. In the 1990s, Falco relocated to Paris and then to Vienna, before relocating to Bangkok in January 2022. Falco's work includes directing short films archived by the Cinémathèque Française, such as Born Too Late and Memphis Beat. He also directed the feature film Urania Descending (2016) and completed the full Urania Trilogy in 2024. Falco acted in films including Great Balls of Fire! and Downtown 81. Falco authored books including Ghosts Behind The Sun: Splendor, Enigma, and Death/Mondo Memphis: Volume 1 (2011) and the photography collection Iconography of Chance: 99 Photographs of the Evanescent South (2015). His solo albums include Disappearing Angels (1996), A Tav Falco Christmas (2016), Cabaret of Daggers (2018), and Desire on Ice (2025).
