Humor

A reflection on the deep and the creatures that attempt to fathom its resources (such as baked salmon and rubbery crocodile meat). A visual journey into the far reaches of waterlogged consciousness, where the yearnings of the tummy meet the revulsion of the cranium—a cranium mostly made up of water in the first place, like a head of cabbage. Besides, the video is more of a head-trip to the nether reaches of Neptune's haunts where tourists glide through guts of glass to ooh and aah at the mysteries of the deep-end.

Now Let Us Praise American Leftists is an experimental video animation that seeks to eulogize and ridicule the American leftist movement of the past century. Foregrounding the exclusionary nature of American leftist politics, and its persistent refusal to allow more diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation to enter into the larger political daialogue, the video presents representations of American leftists as they are: men with mustaches.

A lavish home is visited, shutters click, bottoms are exposed, water splashes and a welcome wetness stains an area unquenched for so long. A jacuzzi bubbles to life in a bedroom community that floats to sleep on aqua-filled rubber.

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

Craggy, ice-encrusted peaks soar skyward as blue lagoons lap incessantly to the drumbeats of big city behemoths hellbent on halibut and hashbrowns! The magic and grandeur of glacier-masked real estate is here for all to see and digest in this bountiful serving of natural delights.

Male escorts and crytozoologists battle behemoths and bulemics in this student-teacher collaboration about undying evil and those that escape it via the LOVE CANAL.

A trip to Winnipeg introduces the viewer to moments of Canadian cuisine and to the easily digestible tidbits that make up the WNDX Film/Video Festival. Come join the movie buffs as they beef up on eye candy and tummy truffles, all the while indulging in a masticating miasma of minutia that's easy to swallow. Wash it all down with some river views and Mr. Coffee secretions and you'll get a taste of the treats that await all who head north to appease the more southerly rumblings of the human anatomy.

On April 6th, 1974, this episode of the Videofreex’s production of Lanesville TV aired, including four segments: a choreographed piece by the Elaine Summers Dancers, a Vietnam tape titled “Where do you get your money?,” several phone conversations with local audience members, and a comical interview with a fictional fish, Sam Trouta.

In Final Exit, an aged one is confronted with his options in blunt terms. Does he want to drag out his existence, increasingly infirm and a burden to his caretakers, or go quietly before resentment overwhelms sentiment? Does he wish to go on living, the quality of his life increasingly diminishing, or be euthanized? Would he prefer cremation or burial? This video confronts the issues of mortality and advancing decrepitude that faces even the friskiest.

A sort-of music video that focuses on and under young women and men engaged in focusing video and movie cameras on other young men and women.

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

Does she ever! A tiny gem that utilises paper animation and a snippet of sound to humorous, kitschy effect.

"You are invited to Jim’s party! Snake optional."

--Cinematexas Festival (Austin, 2001)

"Three more sing-alongs, this time with swans, a snake, and the Red Army Chorus."

--L.A. Freewaves Festival

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

Alienation in academia beneath the chandeliered opulence of a political correctional facility that caters to clashing cultures with chicken fajitas and carefully worded alphabet soup. Features George at the Flaherty Seminar and the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Ned the dog eats, growls and passes gas as we, the viewers, pass the time with him and his keepers as they share the stolen hours with us all. It’s all here: the pizza, the memories, the good times and the bad.

“I may have to get a back up career.” I mull over what I might do if I don’t make it as an artist. What if I lose my eyes? I figure a career as a stand-up comic is a safe bet and try out a few jokes on an imagined audience — of course with my eyes shut tight.

This title is only available on Kip Fulbeck Selected Videos: Volume One.

Despite assurances from local municipalities, a fact of life is that Manholes blow sky high more frequently than most people realize. Manhole 452 directs the viewer’s attention to the shapes, sizes and patterns of manhole covers on Geary Street in San Francisco, and then plunges deep below into the manholes themselves to explore the hidden threat that lies below.

We are what we eat, and we talk about what we are; so, naturally, we get hungry all the time. Join my friends as we not only hear, but see what they are and taste the essence of each one without the fear of emotional attachment. A leisurely, if somewhat "lazy Susan" of chewable tidbits that can be spit out if so desired (or undesired). A session of chowing down and chewing the fat with an assortment of gobblers that break bread, but no wind, with me.

Storms batter California as 1995 ushers in a world of computerized characters and unplugged souls in search of electrified juice. The images of a naked past haunt the denizens of today as a wet tomorrow threatens to sweep them into oblivion on a tide of technology. Already water-bogged and bloated, the occupants seek the sun and the worshippers who strip in defiance of Divine dehydration.

In this surreal experimental narrative, there’s something wrong with a patch of sky. As it travels over Southern England, objects cast up into it come down hugely enlarged, bloated. Meanwhile in London, the patch is in fact a troubling scab on a crippled old man’s head. As the scab develops, all he can do is wait, going through the changes, led on gently by the idiot-savant son with his childlike multiple identities.

Budlong Memorial Middle School is heating up. Queer Teen Romance is a charmingly perverse homage to the after-school special that tackles bullying in a hormone-fueled flurry of forbidden sexual fantasy. When Bryce, the school bully, picks on outcast Kevin, a group of tough (and brightly accessorized) girls decide to teach Bryce a lesson. But maybe Kevin doesn’t want the pain to stop? 

An audience-interactive demonstration of Lev Kuleshov’s famous editing experiment, and a 3D review of loosely related principles of subject/spectator empathy.

Note: should be viewed through 3D glasses. See http://store.yahoo.com/rainbowsymphony/an3dglasreda.html 

This title is also available on Ben Coonley: Trick Pony Trilogy.

A Videofreex performance.  Bart Friedman plays the pump organ and David Cort sings.  He asks Bart to "Play something that I can laugh to," and much laughter ensues.  Then, "because of American society," there is a sad song, and much wailing ensues.

This three-part mini-series explores the mysterious and the mundane in a splash of digital dioramas that wipe across the screen in a cascade of electronic barfs. Zeroing in on the paranormal theories of UFO author John A. Keel, this leisurely exposition, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, sweeps the viewer into a candy-colored world of scintillating mysteries made all the more intriguing by culinary digressions.

Kirsten Stoltmann's video, I Spill My Guts Everyday for Nothing, is exactly that, a portrait of the artist spilling her Guts with a blank expression on her face. Again, Kirsten emerges as an empathetic anti-hero, who, in her own need for confessional exposure, must be regarded as equal parts comic and tragic. The work has unexpected power in its simplicity and humor.

-- James Rondeau

This title is only available as a 3x loop on Suitable Video, Volume 1.

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.