George Kuchar

Director

August 31, 1942 (69 years)

† September 6, 2011

New York, New York

Biography

George Kuchar (August 31, 1942 – September 6, 2011) and his twin brother Mike began making films as teenagers in the 1950s, with 8mm film being their weapon of choice. After shocking their local amateur filmmaking club with their over-the-top stories of lust and angst, they became stars of the NYC underground scene in the 1960s, befriending the likes of Jonas Mekas and Jack Smith. Always working with the constraints of minuscule budgets and nonprofessional actors, the Kuchar’s inspiration comes …

Filmography

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Cinemaville

George Kuchar takes his Japanese student on a trip to Los Angeles and meets with his entertainment industry friends including Buck Henry, Christopher Coppola, and Jeffrey Schwarz.

6.5

Club Vatican

Kuchar’s childhood was heavily shaped by Catholic sexual repression and guilt. Movies acted as an escape from day-to-day life, a parallel reality that reveled in sin and sensation. Teaching at the libertine San Francisco Art Institute from 1971–2011, Kuchar made numerous hot-blooded, Z-grade “classroom pictures” with his students. Several, including Club Vatican, Motel Capri and Evangelust, act as lascivious collective exorcisms of religious hypocrisy and sexual repression. Club Vatican is one of the most visually sumptuous of Kuchar’s classroom pictures, and was recently restored by the Harvard Film Archive (alongside other of Kuchar’s pedagogical free-for-alls). The frame is packed with visual stimulation and the film unfolds as a series of writhing tableaux depicting clergy and sinners alike in perverse Catholic rites. Kuchar called it “a meditation on religious upheaval via mental strife.” Starring Courtney Love!

5.7

I, an Actress

An actress and a director run through a melodramatic scene, speaking to a mannequin.

10.0

The Cage of Nicholas

A 10 minute short by George Kuchar which documents a visit with producer Christopher Coppola (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola and brother of Nicolas Cage), during which Coppola rambles on about cooking, film tricks, and his shaved head.

4.7

Hold Me While I'm Naked

Presented as loosely autobiographical, Hold Me While I’m Naked centres on the tribulations of an independent filmmaker, frustrated at every turn as he tries to make a film that pretends to artistic merit.

5.0

Portrait of Ramona

This movie was made mostly in Brooklyn during some very hot and empty evenings. Since the evenings were so empty, Jane Elford, the star, urged me to get started making another movie (we had completed PAGAN RHAPSODY the year before). I said "okay," and launched her in a photographed series of telephone calls, not really knowing who was going to be on the other end. I was interested at the time in irrational, neurotic responses and so the heroine was put into unstable situations that I dreamt up because I was making a movie with a plot and there should be some action .... Many of the stars appear nude and all I can say is that because of the heat and the general, overall feeling of the film which is one of the usual desperation and explosive emotions, I couldn't see any other way of them playing it. The general tone of everything was ... "Why even bother to get dressed?"

8.5

Metropolitan Monologues

The New York City summer is fueled by the sultry emanations of hot air that tumble off the tongues of potential thespians as they attempt to decipher the gastric guesswork embedded in the prose of the pre-production process. The video camera flits across the boroughs of NYC in a splash-dash sojourn of sumptuous banquets and bohemian bombast, while the down-to-earth wisdom of the seeing impaired helps to guide the protagonist into detours of wisdom befitting his putrid project. A theatrical play incubates in the balding head of the videomaker and as its presence makes itself felt among the various victims of his vision, we share with them the horror of advancing age and the descriptive diatribes toward the destiny of the decrepit damned.

8.0

Going Nowhere

Writes Kuchar: "It was my 50th birthday this year (1992) and my friend's birthday, so I explored our position in time and dusty place with a prognostication on future inertia." In this chapter of his ongoing Video-8 diary, Kuchar's birthday becomes an occasion to ponder mortality, dust, agoraphobia and relationships. Documenting the hilarious yet ultimately melancholy dramas of the everyday within the claustrophobic confines of his apartment, Kuchar may be going nowhere, but, as he notes, "at least we're going nowhere together."

9.0

Knocturne

The rising moon is the main theme in this short movie of three people and an animal going about their nocturnal rituals. This movie is evidently part three of my trilogy that started with HOLD ME WHILE I'M NAKED and ECLIPSE OF THE SUN VIRGIN. It evidently is, since part three never really came out. This seems to look like it could be part three. — GK (anthologyfilmarchives.org)

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Video Album 5: The Thursday People

The comings and goings of the late underground filmmaker, Curt McDowell—and the people and activities that came and went along with him—are the themes that run through this existential diary of daily life. McDowell was dying from AIDS-related illnesses during the production of the diary. “An elegy for McDowell, the videowork captures Kuchar’s mournful remembrances of his long-lasting friendship with the young filmmaker. But it also has the inquisitive charm, perverse humor, and quirky candor that places Kuchar’s visual expressions in a gritty niche all their own.”

10.0

Color Me Shameless

Made when I was a bit depressed which is nothing new,. Bob Cowan happened to be depressed as well and so we had a wonderful time working together. One of the actresses was separated from her husband at this time and the movie solidifies into concrete the repressed desires of everyone.

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A Reel of Home Movies

An eclectic compilation of home movies and early cinematic experiments. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. “From the age of 12 onward until 17 (the restless years) the Kuchar brothers lived life to the fullest and tasted the spices of the lower class, the sugar of the bourgeoisie and the kasha of the jet set. At this time their films were seldom longer than four minutes.” –George Kuchar

8.0

Burnout

A metropolis awash in electrical overdrive crashes in the heat of summer and sends a Bronxite into the clutches of a waterworld further north. It is there that we witness the cooling fogs and diving mammals of maritime yore and sail free in winds of a nautical nature. A nature that fills the summer sky with twinkling tidbits and the tummy with protein rich denizens of Neptune’s soup. A tour of the towering turrets of tomorrow land and the spatial splendor of yesterday’s yearnings captured on both chemical and electrical media.

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Andy's House of Gary

A young painter, and his somewhat slower roommate, talk of paranormal occurrences in a room of charcoal canvasses and ephemeral renderings. Eavesdrop on the improbable and the impossible (BUT TRUE!).

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Vermin of the Vortex

Alienation in academia beneath the chandeliered opulence of a political correctional facility that caters to clashing cultures with chicken fajitas and carefully worded alphabet soup. Features George at the Flaherty Seminar and the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

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The Hairy Horror

A chance encounter with a sober student reveals the mystery of a woodland wonder that has left a mark on his youthful psyche just as it leaves huge footprints on the forest floor. A short meditation on a tall terror in the trees that shade shadowy giants from the glare of sanity.

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Sherman Acres

A drama in six episodes involving psychological breakdowns, marital showdowns, and messy obsessions. The characters include a wayward priest, a promiscuous school-teacher and her proctologist husband, teenage thrill killers, and an obsession-driven psychotherapist with an enema bag. Lots of special effects, as it moves quickly from one major crisis to another.

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The Tower of the Astro-Cyclops

A portrait of a French scientist and author who explores the heavens above and beyond the call of duty. A man unafraid to turn over the rocks that litter a terrain of terror and titillation: a terrain of things that go jump in the night and hide by day only, to re-surface in our nightmares.

7.4

Symphony for a Sinner

Symphony for a Sinner (1979) was a long, lavishly photographed color film generally considered the magnum opus of the class productions.

7.5

Planet of the Vamps

This science fiction adventure centers on the interaction between a crew of Earthmen and their seduction by the love-hungry Amazons of the red planet, Mars. The tale is brought to life with all the opulence that an $800 budget can produce and the young cast of non-actors live up to their fullest foibles as the plot thickens with a mix of romance and wartime action intertwined with a musical number or two. The ambitions were high and the necklines low in this effects-laden tribute to pulp fiction fantasy and intergalactic intercourse.