Mike Kuchar
When the body's "primal" urges feel deprived in a "modern" age, a debate about "sex" and "love" ensues to resolve the question — perhaps even find some solution that will suffice!
A "painter" casts out the demons that haunt his canvases and who creep into his bed at night.
His written letters will fade at the first light; if indeed he is dreaming the world!
"...will somebody lend him their sins, because his old worn out ones have become tiresome."
He felt both dead and alive... having 'died' and having come back to the space of his 'living.'
A kiss can be devine or demonic. A kiss can change your life...alter it.
Something lies yet unwritten within a poet who lost that 'spark' of having been born brand new onto a sacred stage.
A 'poet' and a 'painter' discover a malign muse, but their fear and anger keep them young.
"...Deep in the garden of the Artist's heart, ghosts of bygone worlds arise on gothic wings, calling forth delicious languors."
"Devils"..."Angels," when they sleep they dream not of Heaven, but of us. —Mike Kuchar
...What once was for him "real," is now but a "dream," --for the day comes when we find ourselves stranded with memories.
...There is a garden in the dark hunger of his psyche where forbidden fruit grows.
...They'd rather climb to the stars, than give their souls to a soulless world
A club for misfits who descend into a psychedelic underworld. Made at the San Francisco Art Institute.
...Somewhere inside him something slumbers; the myths, the beliefs that flow, fuse and burn through him.
A cavalcade of characters in conflict with consciousness is conjured up within the confines of Studio 8 at the San Francisco Art Institute and digitized for analysis.
OverRiped words from the lips of an OverExposed boy decorates this litany in pink with purple bruises.
"Great woods, you frighten me like some cathedral's gloom, and awaken pastoral pipes on pagan heights."
A moving tribute to New York icon Mike Kuchar, filmed on his last day before leaving Manhattan to relocate to San Francisco
Videomaker and spoken word performer David Finkelstein sleepwalks down into subconscious corridors.
He sighs for strange and hidden cities whose walls are pink stone, inlaid with opals, ebony and silver, and for altars where the body is worshiped under the shrine of night.
Ripe fruit in sweaty socks; soft eyes, stained and suffering in the origin of consciousness, and a soul needing refrigeration, for it has nearly gone bad!
It Came from Kuchar is the definitive, feature documentary about the legendary, underground filmmaking twins, the Kuchar brothers. George and Mike Kuchar have inspired two generations of filmmakers, actors, musicians, and artists with their zany, "no budget" films and with their uniquely enchanting spirits.
Two men and two women attempt to re-assemble the scattered pieces of life's puzzle.
Playwright and performance artist Marc Arthur paves a color-saturated path from 'awake consciousness' to sleeping 'dreamscape'.
A lady alone amid the flowers of a garden becomes the target of mischievous elements therein.
A House Wife's hum-drum world dissolves away into a thorny Passion Play of miraculous visions.
The Vagabond...what does he seek? - ask the River, ask the Wind - but don't ask Him!
Things "go bump in broad daylight" as archetypical characters romp about in a sunny forest...doll like things and beast men.
Two city dwellers in a relationship grown "tired," are near a deep forest where one hears the lure of Pan's Pipe calling.
Dialogue taken from the Bible is put in the mouths of three souls in a modern apartment, who must deal with a "fall from grace."
There was plenty of fruit growing in Eden; mangos, pears, oranges...why did Eve have to pick that Apple!
An angry trollop and a self-doubting college kid collide in his cramped apartment for an episode of claustrophobia and self-analysis.
Dark, domestic tensions need the cleansing rays of a bright summer afternoon.
Provides a rare glimpse into the world of George and Mike Kuchar, underground filmmaking brothers from the Bronx. Get to know the Kuchars, casually hanging out with John Waters at a party, looking at old yearbook photos with their high school classmate Gerard Malanga. Sit in on an extensive interview with the brothers at Anthology Film Archives.
Two souls, one aged, the other young, contemplate flowers, fairies and earthbound angels sent to tempt and tease.
In this thespian workout, a troop of stage actors improvises within a kaleidoscopic zone of warped spaces.
A girl with two male companions in a room is a space where the mind's eye wanders!
The dialogue for this production, featuring Cupid, is taken from the pages of a personal diary found under a chair.
Blue skies, babbling brooks, and a big book in a field full of flowers is the departure point for this video.
A "grand dame's" delirious daydream blooms like a voluptous blossom in spring.
In this dream-portrait, Mike Kuchar floats through his memories as the sea, space and sky drift past. Wrapped in odd costumes, he frolics with the imaginary creatures surrounding him, and recalls the creatures of his own imagination.
The stimulus for this dissertation on the reason behind the creative impulse is taken verbatim from an author's preface to his book.
A "birthday boy's" poetic yearnings on paper translate into a quest for perfection."
Like ships in a harbor, men come and go in relationships. But, as one character says to another character who is heartbroken: "You sucked enough juice out of him... don't be greedy!"
Sort of a portrait of the videomaker Anne McQuire, who surfaces midway from this waterlogged landscape of El Nino disasters to dispense charm and chocolate within the confines of her concrete office. There is also a flood of imagery that flows in and out of art museums, viewing facilities, and eateries that are perpetually haunted by yours truly along with the spirit of hoboism that feeds on apple pie America.
The life and times of Baltimore film maker and midnight movie pioneer, John Waters.
Looking for "Mr. Right" in all the wrong places makes for a tragic comedy.
A mother and daughter, both dressed in "shocking pink", clash over men and money.
Be careful when you go out into the surf in a skimpy thong... the current can be treacherous and turbulent as is the human heart!
A vain, self centered mother competes with her daughter in the world of carnivorous men and sleazy movies.
Artists with brushes need light to paint a picture, but human feelings function just as well in the dark.
Two strippers decide a walk in the park might lift their spirits, which do get a big boost when they contemplate a park monument dedicated to sailors in this audacious, “beefy” romp.
Armed with an overripe script and ample supply of false eyelashes and lip gloss.
Futuristic story of Carlos and Ben who fall in love in high school despite the racism and and homophobia.
Based on a short story by Charles Bukowski from the collection "Tales of Ordinary Madness."
Paint drips and body fluids ooze in this "tell all" and "hide nothing" documentary about two San Francisco males.
Commissioned to be a "promo" for a loud punk rock band, Mr. Kuchar feared that the noise the band made would spoil the mood of his visuals, so he used the sound of a lush orchestra to score the picture and the antics.
In a garden of roses and memorabilia from darkest Africa, a man and woman ponder the joy of cooking and the companionship of cats. Goodies for the guts abound in this visual essay on feline friendship and far away places. An electronic voyage beyond the stench of house and garden that transports the viewer- and cat- to the promised land.
Although too long by half, this documentary is subtitled "A Trip Through Lotti's Life" and that is essentially what it is. Although done in a style that keeps you guessing what is true and what isn't about her life -- everything from her Aryan lover and her stay in a concentration camp while he is killed for their forbidden love -- it is a fascinating look at this remarkable woman through the eyes and viewfinder of Rosa Von Prauheim.
This film powerfully documents New York City's gay community's response to the AIDS crisis as they are forced to organize themselves after the government's failure to stem the epidemic. Activists who are interviewed include playwrite Larry Kramer, People With AIDS Coalition co-founder Michael Callen (who died of AIDS in 1994), New York filmmaker and journalist Phil Zwickler, as well as representatives from ACT-UP, Queer Nation and the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
Punk icons Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins star in this cult drama about a pregnant pianist named Hedda whose marriage to husband Neal (Don Bajema) hits the skids with the sudden appearance of a mysterious stranger.
A music-filled tour of Christmas good cheer overtakes this gastronomically oriented excursion through the winter season of discontent and yuletime yearnings craving ignition.
A wide-ranging look at pictures I collect on my walls and in my head. A look at pictures I concoct with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, and objects d’art collected by those whose picture is taken by my picture-taking machine.
Writes Kuchar: "It's New York in the summer and I set out to track down some high school friends who have burrowed deep into the 'big apple.' The viewer gets to see how far they've eaten their way to the core in this 45-minute study of urban denizens in the grip of Newtonian damnation." Here, Kuchar visits his mother in the Bronx, chats and eats with old friends in their claustrophobic New York apartments, and muses about friendship, growing older, and a time when the "streets of New York were cleaner, and so was I."
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.”
A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.
Four women in the throes of frustrated sexual desire. Not making fun of them but rather sending up the absurdities of passion and the ways in which it undermines our dignity. One woman, given to heady, long-winded monologues and carrying on like a silent screen vamp, envisions herself as a kind of Eve in the Garden of Eden about to seduce her Adam--but instead of being overcome by the fabled scents of Araby (or such) she is assaulted by the odor of "old socks, gasoline and aftershave."
A documentary portrait of filmmaker George Kuchar conducting a tour of his apartment where he displays memorabilia and his toys which were used for props.
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.
Enter a shimmering forest and encounter the Pot Boiling turbulence of pre-history tribes in conflict. See sacrificial virgins, volcanoes, knife fights, spaceships. It's all in this black-and-white saga of pure escapement.
"One of Kuchar’s few feature-length works is this ribald pastiche to postwar Hollywood melodrama, that period when the studios were trying very hard to be adult. The intricate, overheated plot involves a nurse trapped in an unhappy marriage who escapes the big city in search of greener pastures in Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma. Swerving from earnest homage to dark satire, Kuchar simultaneously imitates and savages the legacy of Sirk, Preminger and Minnelli that inspired him, gleefully intertwining the suggestive and the scatological, while also pointing towards the later postmodern parodies of Cindy Sherman. The Devil’s Cleavage is also a rich time capsule of 1970s San Francisco, replete with cameos from Curt McDowell and Art Spiegelman." —hcl.harvard.edu
"A surreal meditation on a cigarette billboard using a very strange ballerina as an allegory for something or other Indescribably funny." - Seattle International Film Festival, 1978
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?"
From the elephant house of Bronx Zoo to the eight story tall Tabonga Terrace apartments on Sedgwich Avenue, living Mammals scream for their place in the Sun and drop heavy brown excretions in pots of porcelain that splash and clog and suck like huge toothless mouths on the lily-white mounds that lower into the hollow half submerged ovals, creating stagnant damp vacuums that cling and grab.
Mike Kuchar'ss lyrical portrait of everyday life, from making art to making love, all as the Vietnam War rages.
The movie takes a rather negative look at things despite the fact that it was shot in reversal film. It depicts the turbulent relationships of disturbed individuals existing on various levels of an apartment house. Donna Kerness and her husband Hopeton Morris are lurid together and they are also pretty lurid when they're alone.
Green spills over purple ridges and into deep cut valleys. Blue surges up from rounds and hollows, blending with incandescent pink plains, revealing what seems to be the outline of the human face. Scribble spins on blue space in abstract, erratic lines, gaining in momentum and mass to form a coherent link to something recognizable. Crude, bold, darting lines. Black and white scribble. A lace work of electric sparks. These are some of the variations encountered in Kuchar's new film VARIATIONS. Live subjects are broken down into their basic outlines and are then reconstructed into startling concepts of spinning patterns and pulsating designs.
A desperate, married women meets a mysterious man whom she blatantly desires. Through some twists and turns, things do not go over as well as she seems to wish.
In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests.
A young man's struggle with his sexuality overtakes his life, driving him deep into his subconscious where guilt and fears of physicality chase him still further. Cornered by an intangible terror, he realises he must either break out or break down.
The survivors of a nuclear war are taken care of by robots called "fleshapoids." One day one of the fleshapoids runs wild, kills its "mistress," and hides in the home of a human female, for whom it begins to develop feelings.
Corruption of the Damned might seethe with violence and sex, the two most attractive things you can put on the screen, but beneath them a twisted outlook pervades.
A tender and realistic story of a scientist who falls in love with a mummy he has restored to life.
According to the director, the actors did not know what was going on and the images on the screen reflect his own sub-conscious, and naked lusts.
An early masterpiece by Mike Kuchar, in which Babette tells all, leaving no turgid stone unturned.
[A] cautionary tale about past-their-prime thespians caught up in a typically Kucharian vortex of madness. - Anthology Film Archives
The film combines teenage lust and deranged delinquency to create a cautionary tale for the ages.
“It glows with the embers of desire! It smokes with the revelation of men and women longing for robust temptations that will make them sizzle into maturity with a furnace-blast of unrestrained animalism. A film for young and old to enjoy.” —George Kuchar
I Was a Teenage Rumpot was made in 1960, when George and Mike, the twin brothers Kuchar, were all of eighteen years old. Though their films would grow in thematic complexity, Rumpot already shows the visual energy, dynamic music, and anarchic, twisted plot development that so endear the Kuchars to audiences. The outlandish makeup and onscreen behavior would make Jack Smith (of Flaming Creatures) proud. In this context, a sudden moment of feigned modesty (when one woman is discovered undressing) is ironic indeed. --Andy Ditzler
An insane, deformed killer stalks the grounds of a resort house, bringing sudden violence to those of easy virtue and godlessness.
Big…Rousing…Memorable! The incredible war saga of our own boys in a Jap-infested jungle in the Botanical Gardens. Hear Lloyd Thorner sing the title song. You’ll come out whistling from both ends.
"A Tub Named Desire," the first movie with Donna Kerness, does not exist anymore, except for one 8mm print that was in George Kuchar's possession. The footage was taken apart, and some of it is included in "The Naked and the Nude." - Carnegie Museum of Art archive.
They walk through "life", sometimes with no "compass" in hand and become "lost".
A rose scented breeze enters a young man's, winding its cool arms around him... Together they will roam the darkness of his life.
Combining documentary elements with the finish of a feature film, BIRD IN THE SKY delivers a gritty, poetic view of one man’s spiritual struggle on the streets of NYC. Rob has been given a second chance to right the wrongs of his street-wise past; he must perform a miracle to be saved. His fate lies in his love for a young woman, Kay, who is coping with the loss of her child, and his holy conviction that he can relieve her grief by miraculously bringing back the little girl. The line between good and evil, between crime and miracle, is crossed only by those willing to face God. New York City is more than a backdrop to this compelling film, the city gave birth to the story, the characters and the style. The film couldn’t have been made any other place, yet the message is universal and speaks to people everywhere.
An epic tale of love and loss featuring legendary underground filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar, as told to an answering machine.
In the depths of night lurks a beautiful fever that heats a man's blood.
A broken god on the stone slab in a desert, waiting for "he" that will dig for him; wipe the sand from his handsome face.
Many a man has tried to leave the prison of his hide; it's no "paradise" living in skin!
In the serene zone between twilight and dawn, a lullaby of thoughts floats beneath a blanket of stars.
His love of Heaven's virtues could not prevent a hunger for God's enticing creatures.
Earth's "garden" is fragrant with temptations but has far too many "thorns". He got "stung" and fell...got up...and fell, again and again!
“I shall walk softly on the Earth but make the footprints deep”. A young man contemplates the inevitable passing of time, and the different versions of himself that come along with it.
He peels away layers of secrets to you for what you are, and he likes scars because they tell stories.
