Diary

Cut the Parrot

The police phoned. They left a message on the machine. They said he was dead. The video unwinds through stories of sex for rent, unclaimed bodies, cigarette burns, and other monuments of life’s long run from wall to wall. Cut the Parrot is three grotesque comedies in one: the stories of Gerry, Susan, and Albert. Songs of hope and heartbreak spill from the mouths of the performers. The order of impersonation rules.

Curmudgeon of the Campus

Tippi the she-devil gets a little playmate of the feline persuasion while I dangle about the puppet populated premises with a head full of scholastic memories that delineate several teaching gigs featuring the fruits of our intercourse.

Cretins of the Crate

A party of past students illuminates this diary of boxed dreams, as those enclosed face the real world and nurture into existence the future people of the next millennium.

Come Forth, Julyowa

A stay in Fairfiled, Iowa reveals the American dream being riddled with that which dwells on distant planes and the need for our nation’s people to express the forces of good and evil via videography and pyrotechnical vomit.

Cocktail Crooners

Legendary filmmaker George Kuchar, in between trips to the bathroom, visits three Bay area friends: an eccentric filmmaking couple who produce zombie movies, and performer Billy Nayer.

City Sluckers

Summer and smoke (from pork chops) filters into every rip in my tee-shirt as legs and souls are bared for the infra-red-hot digital camera that's ON THE PROWL!

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.

The Cage of Nicholas

A short atmospheric tour of a movie star’s mansion and a glimpse of the living things within the chambers: things that cook, feed the sharks, and gnaw on bones.

If Every Girl Had a Diary

Setting her pixelvision camera on herself and her room, Benning searches for a sense of identity and respect as a woman and a lesbian. Acting alternately as confessor and accuser, the camera captures Benning’s anger and frustration at feeling trapped by social prejudices.

This title is also available on Sadie Benning Videoworks: Volume 1.

The Holiday Xmas Video of 1991

Amid the greenery of what should be a White Christmas, there sits the blackness close to my heart; and beyond that there bellows a legion of behemoths who know not shame nor guilt. A homeless herd of heaven on earth that smell of fish and exotic ports of call. A call I fail to heed.

Holidaze, 1994

The season sweeps through in a blur of glitches, gulps and sweetened goo, as chimes wring out the old and ring in the new.

Holiday Hang Ups

The annual holiday video is off and swinging with this foray into festive chatter and explosive fireworks. Sweet treats are served up along with ice cream and jungle jingles befitting this season of goodwill toward man and beast. Join the fun and meet new faces with plenty of hair both real and fake. Celebrate a New Year with primate fury and rejoice in the bonding of species that technology has awarded to those in need.

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.

Going Nowhere

Frozen in time and place, yet celebrating birthdays left and right, I ponder the technology that sends me out into the world via magnetism—a magnetism that not only attracts images and sound but also the particles of nothing that become something when activated by a dust mop. A meditation on white spots and black holes that suck and purr when plugged in or turned on.