Humor

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.

“The tape ultimately addresses all the big questions — death, origin and family, religion — as well as the small discomforts of the body, only to reverse their order of importance.”

— Margaret Morse, Framework (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)

Modeled after NBC’s long-running science program Watch Mr. Wizard, this tape features Torreano as Mr. Wizard instructing a skeptical boy on how to build a diamond out of pieces of wood. The boy remains unimpressed until Torreano uses a “video paintbox” to create flashy special effects. Painter John Torreano’s use of galaxy clusters as a reference for his fake jewel studded canvases and diamond-shaped sculptures suggested the nostalgic format of this video profile by MICA-TV.

1.1 Acre Flat Screen is a 45-minute video about a year-long effort to improve a lot of 1.1 acres of desert land in Utah, which we purchased on September 4th 2002 on eBay. The video starts with ways of finding a lot in the desert, using satellite images, topographical maps, a compass and string. It displays ideas and plans on how to improve the land’s value and documents our preparations to face the unforgiving desert.

In New Report, Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy are reporters at WKRH - the feminist news station that is "pregnant with information." As Henry Irigaray (Hardy) and Henry Stein-Acker-Hill (Greenwood), these two lesbian feminist artists stage reports on and with their friends, their social herstories, their nerves, and their bodies. It is urgently broadcast live to the newsroom and out to their studio audience.

Netherlands, January 29th 2006/January 29th 2007

Hamas have just won the Palestinian elections and a chocolate bar in a Rotterdam hotel room eventually reminds the filmmaker that there are more important things going on in the world outside. Exactly one year later he returns to the same city and checks in at a very different hotel. Pyramids/Skunk is a double episode in the Hotel Diaries series, a collection of video recordings made in the world’s hotel rooms, which relate personal experiences and reflections to contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.

A meditation on the nature of “Nature” and the uncertainty of “Cause and Effect.”

“Originally (like most of my earlier film work) this was a performance piece: text performed alongside the projected image. A complex and absurd ‘story’ about a man who thought there was something wrong with his eye. He goes to the doctor, who can’t help him much, but he finds a way he can operate on himself with uplifting yet troubling results.”

—Jennet Thomas

Super-8 and 8mm, film mattes, painting directly onto film, and model/object animation.

The rivers are in flood stage during a scenic tour of Tulsa; while in El Reno, Oklahoma, it's as dry as a two-week old peach cobbler. The locals puff up on breaded catfish while an influx of British visitors seek in vain a vegetarian platter amid the thunder boom and hail clatter. 

Based on a Swedish folk tale, The Sausage tells the humorous story of two sisters, three wishes, and a calamitous obsession with a sausage. The Sausage is the first completed episode of Fairy Fantastic!, a fairy and folk tale series presenting gender fluid adaptations of classic tales.

The Badger Series has issues and attempts, each episode, to resolve them. Recasting a glove puppet show through his own present day sensibilities, Paul assumes the role of kindly uncle mentor to a household of capersome woodland creatures. Mortality, self-sacrfice, depression, altered states of consciousness and transgressive art practices are all explored as part of their everyday lives together.

An alternative earth music video. An epic last stand. A portrait of two utilitarian workers engaging in a collaboration with Karen, manifesting improvisational geographic friendships...

This title is also available on HalfLifers: The Complete History.

Ireland, October 20th 2007

The filmmaker returns to the city where he made the first video in the series and looks back at the events of the past six years.

Six Years Later is the eighth episode in the Hotel Diaries series, a collection of video recordings made in the world’s hotel rooms, which relate personal experiences and reflections to contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.

Produced at the San Francisco Art Institute, and featuring a few musical numbers, this jungle drama deals with a commercial corporation infiltrating the Amazon to sell beauty aids to the indigenous peoples. Witch doctor magic and political intrigue run rampant in this hot house environment, and men and women deal with the beast within and without.

This high octane drama that I made with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute chronicles the moral decline of it's heroine, as the love of a man she obsesses over drives her over something else: a cliff into hell.  It's a free fall all the way to the bottom destination, and there's a heck of a lot of nice looking, young people along for the ride.

An upbeat and engaging documentary with a dynamic, experimental style. Beijoquerio introduces viewers to a Brazilian man who strives for world peace by kissing all the rich and famous people he can reach. Upon hearing that Frank Sinatra was afraid to come and perform in Brazil, he felt compelled to go and kiss Sinatra to prove Brazil was a friendly place. He has suffered many injuries and broken bones as a result of his mission, which curiously enough embodies basic notions of “Christian” behavior, yet scares many away.

Taken almost verbatim from a newspaper, The Arizona Daily Star, the video recounts the story of Ramona Barrrara, a New Mexico woman who saw the face of Jesus in a tortilla when she was rolling her husband's burrito. In an attempt to manipulate the media to her advantage in publicizing this miraculous event, the media ultimately exploited the most important event of this woman's life for its sensational value.

Aroma of Enchantment is a video essay investigating the fascination Japanese teenagers have for the America of the 1950s and '60s, sporting bobby socks and hair soaked with Brylcreem. Weaving together historical anecdotes about General Douglas MacArthur and his own feelings of alienation in the midst of Japanese culture, Lord focuses on stories told by collectors of American memorabilia in Japan and advocates of Americanization.

TV's invasion of viewers' domiciles gets turned upside down in the video as a fan's (Millner) domestic life is superimposed onto the set of Roseanne, driving home unexpected reverberations as the nuclear family teeters on the edge of dysfunction. A schmooze-fest between Millner and Roseanne ends by detonating the UNcommon desire that both fan and star articulate, to GO TOO FAR. Note: This tape is a director’s cut of the version originally telecast as part of the PBS mini-series, Signal to Noise, about the videomaker’s obsession with Roseanne.

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!).

Gibbons plays the sleazy Director and lampoons the movie audition and its legendary corollary, the casting couch. Barbie is recast, not as the impossible-to-attain ideal beauty, but as the victim of sexual harrassment and exploitation.

This title is also available on Joe Gibbons Videoworks: Volume 1.

"A major influence for generating ideas for me was not what I could contrive on my desktop, but being open and receptive to “accident”. For instance, one evening in 1972 while typing a syllabus for a class on my old Smith Corona typewriter, I happened to see on the TV a documentary by Leni Riefenstahl. German troops were marching, and I found that I could duplicate the “ta ta tum, ta ta tum, ta ta tum tum tum” of the drumbeat by typing “mar mar march mar mar march.“ Had not the broadcast of this film taken place while I was typing, I would never have thought of this concept.

From the fall colors of the Bronx, we travel up the Hudson River to Bard College and chew the fat with some notable faculty in the film department, who live in the shadow of the Catskill Moutains. Then it's down to Sarasota, Florida where we go to prowl the manicured jungles and opulent estates on Tampa Bay. All of the above is punctuated by a symphonic squad of melodic mannequins and cranked-up antiques that spew forth jingles that jangle in jubilation at the bounty deposited in their slots.

"Actions, states, one B+W video camera, the Paik Abe Colorizer, a video switcher. The two states, a b a b, I put my hand in the camera frame and saw a colored hand shifting. I moved my, the, hand, including back and forth, realizing or connecting to the visual and language potential of front hand and back hand. Giving it some veracity, the pace became about attempting to keep up with the position changes together with verbally reciting front hand back hand, co-coordinating from hand to mouth and mouth to hand."

– Peer Bode

As recent state cut-backs force many mental patients out into the real world, Tony Oursler and Joe Gibbons team up to address psychiatric deinstitutionalization from a comic angle. After years of being cared for, Tony, Joe and their dog Woody leave the cuckoo’s nest and reluctantly face the prospect of finding jobs and cooking their own meals. Their darkly comic adventures include a comatose Tony tuning in to daytime TV, and Joe fantasizing about death while strolling in the park.

In The Great Mojado Invasion (The Second US - Mexico War), writer/performer Guillermo Gómez-Peña and filmmaker Gustavo Vazquez combine Chicano wit and political vision to create an ironic, post-millennial and postmodern look at the future of U.S./Mexican relations. Both artist and director generate a complex commentary on history, society, pop culture, the politics of language and the repercussions of ethnic dominance.