Humor

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.

In this spoof program produced for Lanesville TV, the premise is that a “Sheik” has come to buy all the land in Lanesville. Videofreex member Carol Vontobel reports that the sheik (Bart Friedman), escorted by his real estate agent (Parry Teasdale) is approaching people in the community and asking to buy their homes. An unknown Lanesville local chauffeurs them around, and the Videofreex interview Mr. Benjamin, Mr. And Mrs. Kelly, Mr. Lloyd, Mr. and Mrs. Ginsburg, and others from the Tavern.

In Reel 1, newly re-mastered in 2005, a series of vignettes and jokes to camera take place, some starring Wegman’s droll and obliging canine partner Man Ray. Both the human body and props are employed to amusing effect: lamps talk, a microphone is dragged around, stomachs sing. At one point, Wegman dribbles milk on to the floor, to be lapped up by a thirsty dog.

Contents:

Microphone, 0:47

Pocketbook Man, 1:19

Anet and Abtu, 0:47

The Ring, 1:11

Randy’s Sick, 0:16

Milk/Floor, 1:02

A tour of literary scraps that litter the highway of lost souls in search of publications to be publicized. The crush of printed pulp as it smears its way through the various media that feed off its symbols and excesses. The lust of writers made pure by the whiteness of the sheets they imprint with the shadow markings of their Smith-Corona contraption as it keeps pounding late into the night.

“Christopher Wilcha’s fascinating feature-length video reminds us how seldom we’re allowed to see certain businesses operating from the inside. Wilcha, a 22-year-old college graduate and alternative-rock enthusiast, was hired by the Columbia Record and Tape Club—apparently as a fluke—to help launch a whole new niche-marketing division, which brought him face-to-face with the contradictory meanings of the term ‘alternative’ once it’s been embraced by the mass market.

A trip to a barren landscape of jagged peaks and deep crevasses becomes a playground for an over-dressed hiker and his beefcake buddy as they secrete and imbibe fluids from various containers.

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

This very funny video plays with the identification of the camera as phallus, as an instrument of power and domination intruding upon reality; never an innocent bystander, it is always the organizing locus of events. Over sequences in which the camera/viewer approaches entrances to houses, shops, and other buildings, the soundtrack carries the moans of a man and woman reaching orgasm. The pitch and urgency of their moaning increases as the camera nears and finally penetrates its target.

This weather diary finds me not quite alone on the prairie as Pepe and Poncho pay a visit. They dangle about the motel room and peer into blue tinged moods of explosive angst and laid back lumpiness. The sky above seeths and soothes the sinners below as we plod the sod with shiftless soles. Come join the pageant of tropospheric turmoil as flesh and wood ponder the vortex of violence that threatens manipulated mobility.

A winter chill sets in making the furry residents of various dwelling places a center of affection and reflection. The images conjured up are steeped in a twilight worthy of polar pinpoints in the grip of glaciated gloom. The crushing weight of frigid fragments of time threatens to bury the animated remains of sentient stiffs as they flex their muscles in a vain attempt to ward off encroaching crustiness. Only the lure of mammalian fur promises a few precious moments of centigrade comfort in this zone of zero zoology.

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.

Bill Murray and Christopher Guest lead a behind-the-scenes tour of the 1976 showdown between the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers. This irreverent view of football and America's number one sports event examines the "Woodstock of corporate America" from the viewpoint of the players, the wives, the fans and the media. The big business of sports, the high stakes, the pressures, the cost in health and happiness are all covered in this kaleidoscopic view of another American ritual.

"I just can't resist trying to empathize with animals and plants.  I think that in the process of attempting to learn what it's like to be an animal or plant, I learn more about what it means to be human."
--Sam Easterson

Encompassing both Thanksgiving, Christmas and the exploding New Year's Eve celebrations, this holiday video is chock full of chicken and chatter befitting the season. There's a turkey in there too and a hungry clan of consumer ready to eat you out of house and home (with a house made specifically for that purpose). Come join the merry mayhem as young and old devour what's left of the old year to burp up the new one!

Taped in Normal, Illinois, during the height of autumn, a snapshot of a young girl triggers a meditation on dying innocence and sizzling sausages as a low, winter sun ignites the smoke of greasy longings and meat-eating hunger.

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

Kipnis describes this tape as "an appropriation of the aesthetics of both late capitalism and early Soviet cinema—MTV meets Eisenstein—reconstructing Karl Marx for the video age.” She presents a postmodern lecture delivered by a chorus of drag queens on the unexpected corelations between Marx’s theories and the carbuncles that plagued the body of the rotund thinker for over thirty years. Marx’s erupting, diseased body is juxtaposed with the “body politic", and posited as a symbol of contemporary society proceeding the failed revolutions of the late 1960s.

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.

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.

A drama in six episodes involving psychological breakdowns, marital showdowns, and messy obsessions. The characters include a wayward priest, a promiscuous school-teacher and her proctologist husband, teenage thrill killers, and an obsession-driven psychotherapist with an enema bag. Lots of special effects, as it moves quickly from one major crisis to another.

My new pussy from HELL.

This time, the call of the west sends me packing to Oregon, California and Arizona. You too can experience the dizzy delights of a whirlwind tour and witness wonders seen through the savage eye of a Sony camcorder. Actually, the adventure is rather mellow in mood and should spare the viewer a need for the ever looming and inevitable barf bag. See Phoenix in all its rocky royalty! Relish in the student clogged ivy halls of Portland! Immerse yourself in a technicolor rendering of Irvine, California.

George goes to Oklahoma, but there's a lull in storm activity. It's spring, and though there's romance in the air, the lightning just doesn’t strike; so George makes his own rain—of sorts. Despite the drought, the videos must go on.

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

Ponies discover an equine Shangri-La. The audience is introduced to a classic dance step. Chubby Checker provides the musical accompaniment.

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

The disparate chronicles of a high school wrestling team, a flooded town of aliens, and the love affair between two young men. Performers responded to individual drawings and prompts to collectively generate improvisational dialog during the Pilot Conference: Experimental Media for Feminist Trespass, in Chicago, 2004.

With Becca Taylor

The dark and sloppy side of touring college towns with your work. An internal expose of external secretions that unfortunately make it to the boob tube in full color.

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