Autobiography

Animal Attraction

Animal Attraction is a documentary about the relationship between people and animals that questions the way we project our hopes and desires onto our pets, and ascribe human qualities and attributes to their gestures. The video was inspired by the plight of the filmmaker who was frustrated by the obnoxious behavior of her cat, Ernie. As a last resort, she gave in to a friend's suggestion to contact an animal communicator. This is her journey with interspecies telepathic communicator, Dawn Hayman, from Spring Farm CARES, an animal sanctuary in upstate New York.

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!).

Amsterdam Camera Vacation

"I'm not going to go to the Anne Frank House—I don't think I could take it—being a tourist is bad enough—though I'm not really a tourist—I'm here working—my camera's the one on vacation—taking holiday sounds and images—it's having a nice change of pace—for me it's still the same old thing—talking and talking.

Archival Quality

Archival Quality is comprised of four segments. In the first, “Memorativa", powerful childhood experiences of secrets are evoked. In “Olfatus", documentation of the artist’s performances are revealed by clicking on symbols in landscape. The third segment, “Gustus", is co-named “Slices of Life, My Videotapes (1976-89)” and takes the form of a giant pizza, slices of which, when clicked, advance towards the reader. “Vermio,” the fourth segment, consists of four text-and-image collages, sections of which can be “peeled off” to reveal loops of sound and image.

Buildings and Grounds/ The Angst Archive

"...a rumination, a series of borrowed 'dialogues' out of an ongoing argument with myself. It meanders, mentally and physically, reflecting on the conditions of being human; on transience, consciousness and desire. It uses landscapes as provocations, as sites of contemplation. And between the landscape and the thought, i.e. between the radical presence of the physical world and the idea, there is, more often than not, a distance, disbelief or irony."

--Ken Kobland

Borderstasis: A Video Diary

This strange, lyrical performance video diary is a millennial reflection on the impossibility to "reveal" one’s self in stormy times such as ours. The piece is also about the intricate connections between performance and everyday life; about language, identity, love, nostalgia and activism amidst the California apocalypse.

el güero

"A refreshing look at karaoke, psychedelic dance moves, and donuts all mashed together into a small and swinging film about a man who considers his private thoughts and private jokes worth sharing with a large audience. And it's unlikely that many would disagree."

--Impakt Festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2001

This title is also available on Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 1.

The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity

The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity is a documentary about the search for four lost treasures buried on a single farm in Missouri. These treasures include a Spanish explorer's gold, silver from the Civil War, mysterious stone carvings, lost texts, and a wife's attempt to heal her husband and protect herself and her children. Part personal documentary and part historical essay, The Disappointment traces the patterns of cultural forgetting etched in the landscape of the Austin Farm.

Cult of the Cubicles

In this classic example of the Kuchar style, George travels to the Bronx to visit his mother and to see old classmates from art school. “We see what they have become or are becoming or already became.”

This title is also available on The World of George Kuchar.

Creeping Crimson

George visits his mother in the hospital on Halloween and contemplates the autumn colors.

This title is also available on The World of George Kuchar.

Comédie

"This video in two parts is a newcomer's portrait of Montréal, and focuses on two of my architectural obsessions: the Hydro Québec building and the Métro. I spent my first winter in Montréal in a cold, dark, first-floor apartment. I sat in the kitchen beside the electric heater, drinking coffee and watching the disk on the electric meter spin faster and faster, all the while wondering how I would manage to pay the bills. At night, I lay in bed and looked at the enormous illuminated 'Q' on the Hydro Québec building and wondered how much it cost to keep it lit every night.

The Celluloids

George stays in San Francisco for this video about local filmmakers and their future projects.

Carlos Nader

The question, “Who am I?” has been asked over the centuries in many different ways. Videomaker Carlos Nader adds another approach in his investigation into the nature of the individual by taking the work beyond self-examination and asking it of others. What is revealed is the impossibility of rational thinking to understand the essentialism of human identity. Nader describes this work as a “non-autobiography-video” about its author; a video about nothing.” Exploring notions of the irreducibility of identity to one’s color, nationality, or politics, the tape “wants to be anyone’s biography.

Caged Culture

Two women, miles apart in spacial terms, chat about their art and motivational meanderings amid images of Chinese potstickers and fresh pasta. A man sits with them and chews the fat, revealing the ups and downs of social intercourse and parental secretions (secrets).

Habit

Habit is an autobiographical documentary that follows the current history of the AIDS epidemic along dual trajectories: the efforts of South Africa’s leading AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign, struggling to gain access to AIDS drugs and the daily routine of the videomaker, a veteran AIDS activist in the U.S. who has been living with AIDS for more than ten years.