THE WORLD OF
GEORGE KUCHAR
 DVD Box Set, 2006, 9:50:00

 

Beloved by filmmakers such as John Waters and Todd Solondz, George Kuchar has been working with the moving image for nearly half a century. In the 1950s, Kuchar and his twin brother Mike began producing ultra-low-budget underground versions of Hollywood genre films, with names like I Was a Teenage Rumpot and The Devil’s Cleavage. These 8mm kitchen-sink masterpieces bore the distinctive marks of what Susan Sontag called “camp,” and positioned the Kuchar brothers as the Bronx’s answer to the downtown underground filmmaking scene, which quickly adopted the Kuchars as their own—and in the work of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and others, showed their influence.

Since the 1980s, Kuchar has been creating brilliantly edited, hilarious, and often diaristic tapes made with dime-store props and not-so-special effects, using friends as actors and the “pageant that is life” for his studio. In an essay that accompanies The World of George Kuchar, Gene Youngblood references his 1968 article on the (then) filmmaker, writing that, ‘“in these apparently lighthearted works I have always detected something more serious, something similar to the corrosive personal vision of Luis Buñuel, though I would not for an instant compare Kuchar to the Spanish master. Today,” Youngblood continues, “I would. There is no doubt in my mind that George Kuchar is one of the great artists in the history of the moving image.” Curated by Steve Reinke and including essays by Reinke and Gene Youngblood, The World of George Kuchar collects 27 works on five discs, and serves as a vehicle into Kuchar’s ever-expanding (200+ and growing) oeuvre of video work.

 

DISC 1

Video Album 5: The Thursday People video clip
1987, 58:49, U.S., color, sound

We, The Normal video clip
1987, 11:29, U.S., color, sound

Cult of the Cubicles video clip
1987, 45:34, U.S., color, sound

DISC 2

Creeping Crimson video clip
1987, 13:13, U.S., color, sound

Rainy Season video clip
1987, 28:30, U.S., color, sound

Weather Diary 3 video clip
1988, 23:51, U.S., color, sound

500 Millibars to Ecstasy video clip
1989, 16:24, U.S., color, sound

Passage to Wetness video clip
1990, 14:31, U.S., color, sound

Scarlet Droppings video clip
1991, 10:19, U.S., color, sound

DISC 3

Weather Diary 6 video clip
1990, 28:30, U.S., color, sound

Point 'n' Shoot video clip
1989, 05:06, U.S., color, sound

Rocky Interlude video clip
1990, 07:28, U.S., color, sound

Snap 'n' Snatch video clip
1990, 05:35, U.S., color, sound

Award video clip
1992, 20:13, U.S., color, sound

Route 666 video clip
1994, 07:51, U.S., color, sound

Uncle Evil video clip
1996, 07:02, U.S., color, sound

Season of Sorrow video clip
1996, 12:23, U.S., color, sound

The Inmate video clip
1997, 15:57, U.S., color, sound

DISC 4

Metropolitan Monologues video clip
2000, 44:08, U.S., color, sound

Cyclone Alley Ceramics video clip
2000, 11:33, U.S., color, sound

The Kingdom by the Sea video clip
2002, 19:00, U.S., color, sound

Burnout video clip
2003, 19:47, U.S., color, sound

Supercell video clip
2004, 08:53, U.S., color, sound

Song of the Whoopee Wind video clip
2005, 11:45, U.S., color, sound

DISC 5

George Kuchar: An Interview video clip
Video Data Bank, 2005, 45:58, U.S., color, sound

Evangelust video clip
George Kuchar & his students, 1988, 34:55, U.S., color, sound

Kaponga Island video clip
George Kuchar & his students, 2004, 26:51, U.S., color, sound