She produced and directed HBO's Emmy nominated documentary, Larry Kramer in Love & Anger, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival.
As the founder of the Multimedia Unit at Gay Men's Health Crisis, she created the television series Living with AIDS.
[2] When Joey Leonte from the Gay Men's Health Crisis came to her class to request a video, and none of the students wanted to work with him, the shame of her class' reaction drove Carlomusto to volunteer for the Gay Men's Health Crisis to increase awareness about AIDS and build empathy for those with the illness.
[5] She began as the projectionist for their safe sex workshops, then left her teaching job at NYU to start up the Multimedia Production Unit in order to produce a weekly television program called Living with AIDS.
[5] This was the longest running of the Gay Men's Health Crisis television series, with guest videographers including Marina Alvarez, Sarah Cawley, Ronald Dodd, Andres J. Figueroa, Laura Ganis, Alexandra Juhasz, Ray Navarro, Steven Okazaki, Catherine Saalfield, Kristin Thomas, and Paul Zakrzewski.
These videographers not only made safe sex videos and educational films for healthy living with AIDS, but also gathered oral histories and interviews from diverse group of people suffering from the disease.
Carlomusto was part of the Woman's affinity group of ACT UP that focused on bringing visibility to how AIDS impacted women.
In 1988, in response to an article by Dr Robert Gould in Cosmopolitan Magazine which said that straight women did not have to worry about AIDS, the Woman's Affinity group, including Rebecca Cole, Maxine Wolfe, Maria Maggenti and Denise Ribble, and Carlomusto organized a direct action against Cosmopolitan Magazine.
They interviewed the author of that article, psychiatrist Robert Gould, who had made uninformed statements about women and AIDS.
[5] In February 1987, Testing the Limits Collective founders Gregg Bordowitz and David Meieran filmed the first ACT UP demonstration at Wall Street.
Bordowitz and Meieran contacted Hilery Kipness who worked with Downtown Community Television, along with Sandra Elgear and Robyn Hutt from the Whitney program, and together they formed the Testing the Limits collective.
This collective created Testing the Limits: New York City, the first direct action AIDS activist video.
[6] Carlomusto, Bordowitz, Catherine Saalfield, Ray Navarro, Ellen Spiro, Costa Pappas, Robert Beck, Rob Kurilla, and George Plagianos went on to form DIVA TV in 1989.
Carlomusto participated in the creation of several early DIVA TV videos: Target City Hall, Like a Prayer (1991) and Pride.
Her best known work include the documentaries L is for the Way You Look (1991); Shatzi is Dying (2000); Sex in an Epidemic (2011), and Larry Kramer: In Love and Anger (2015).
[7] Independent from her AIDS work, Carlomusto created the personal documentary To Catch a Glimpse (2007), which investigates the mysterious death of her grandmother.
[8] Jean Carlomusto is currently director of the Television Center and professor in the Communication and Film Department at LIU Post Long Island University in Brookville, New York.
"AIDS; A Living Archive", co-curated with Jane Rosett part of the exhibit ''Gay Men's Health Crisis: 20 Years Fighting for People with H.I.V./AIDS.