Mike Kuchar

A visit with the inimitable Mike Kuchar.

An epic tale of love and loss. Made using voicemails the Kuchar brothers left on her home answering machine, the artist reveals George and Mike in all their candid honesty leading up to and following George’s untimely death in 2011. McGuire floats their voices along a river of digital scribbles and her own voice in singer/songwriter mode. The beauty of the piece lies partly in how the voicemails, used as-is and chronologically, contain an entire narrative about love and loss in a DIY style reminiscent of the Kuchars.

A moving tribute to New York icon Mike Kuchar, filmed on his last day before leaving Manhattan to relocate to San Francisco

It Came from Kuchar is the definitive, feature documentary about the legendary, underground filmmaking twins, the Kuchar brothers. George and Mike Kuchar have inspired two generations of filmmakers, actors, musicians, and artists with their zany, "no budget" films and with their uniquely enchanting spirits.

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

The life and times of Baltimore film maker and midnight movie pioneer, John Waters.

BIRD IN THE SKY is a gritty, poetic tale of a young man’s spiritual struggle on the streets of New York City. Rob has been given a second chance to right the wrongs of his street-wise past; he must perform a miracle to be saved. His fate lies in his love for a young woman, Kay, who is coping with the loss of her child.

Provides a rare glimpse into the world of George and Mike Kuchar, underground filmmaking brothers from the Bronx. Get to know the Kuchars, casually hanging out with John Waters at a party, looking at old yearbook photos with their high school classmate Gerard Malanga. Sit in on an extensive interview with the brothers at Anthology Film Archives.

In this dream-portrait, Mike Kuchar floats through his memories as the sea, space and sky drift past. Wrapped in odd costumes, he frolics with the imaginary creatures surrounding him, and recalls the creatures of his own imagination.

Frisco anxiously awaits the pyrotechnic birth of a New Year while the remnants of holiday greenery still burn bright in all the right places. One of those places gives shelter to an Abyssinian animal of lethargic nature, while all about her the rumblings of tummies in turmoil foreshadow the gluttony of her bipedal guardian.

A man is at odds with his very existence when he meets a salacious streetwalker, has his fortune read by a mysterious man and is chased by a killer.

Sort of a portrait of the videomaker Anne McQuire, who surfaces midway from this waterlogged landscape of El Nino disasters to dispense charm and chocolate within the confines of her concrete office. There is also a flood of imagery that flows in and out of art museums, viewing facilities, and eateries that are perpetually haunted by yours truly along with the spirit of hoboism that feeds on apple pie America.

A behind-the-scenes look at the man behind the trophy and the poisons that taint an otherwise jubilant jamboree.

Based on a short story by Charles Bukowski from the collection "Tales of Ordinary Madness."

In a garden of roses and memorabilia from darkest Africa, a man and woman ponder the joy of cooking and the companionship of cats. Goodies for the guts abound in this visual essay on feline friendship and far away places. An electronic voyage beyond the stench of house and garden that transports the viewer- and cat- to the promised land.

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.

The comings and goings of the late underground filmmaker, Curt McDowell—and the people and activities that came and went along with him—are the themes that run through this existential diary of daily life. McDowell was dying from AIDS-related illnesses during the production of the diary. “An elegy for McDowell, the videowork captures Kuchar’s mournful remembrances of his long-lasting friendship with the young filmmaker. But it also has the inquisitive charm, perverse humor, and quirky candor that places Kuchar’s visual expressions in a gritty niche all their own.”

A music-filled tour of Christmas good cheer overtakes this gastronomically oriented excursion through the winter season of discontent and yuletime yearnings craving ignition.

A wide-ranging look at pictures I collect on my walls and in my head. A look at pictures I concoct with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, and objects d’art collected by those whose picture is taken by my picture-taking machine.

A documentary portrait of filmmaker George Kuchar conducting a tour of his apartment where he displays memorabilia and his toys which were used for props.

Writes Kuchar: "It's New York in the summer and I set out to track down some high school friends who have burrowed deep into the 'big apple.' The viewer gets to see how far they've eaten their way to the core in this 45-minute study of urban denizens in the grip of Newtonian damnation." Here, Kuchar visits his mother in the Bronx, chats and eats with old friends in their claustrophobic New York apartments, and muses about friendship, growing older, and a time when the "streets of New York were cleaner, and so was I."

A short film by George Kuchar.

Return to the House of Pain documents my walking through the turf and sludge of the Big Apple and many worm holes... I chomp my way back west and gnaw on all that sinks stomachward and beyond in vertiginous aching.

Portrait of American filmmaker Mike Kuchar, shot in New York (United States of America) on December 2, 1988 at 7:30 PM.

A trip to Boston to visit a local filmmaker in his studio is followed by a journey to the cinematic facilities of SUNY College in Purchase, NY, and then to the kitchen and living quarters of my mother in the Bronx. My mother is in her most candid mode as we relate and debate. My brother Mike suffers dental woes, too.

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Seadrift is based on a story The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, and was shot partially in Marblehead Mass. Each section represents a synthesis of the various aspects and moods of the story. The sum total of the fragments expresses the atmosphere of the whole.

"Curt McDowell's NUDES (A Sketchbook) is a paean to the filmmaker's closest friends: a series of portraits (beginning with one of George Kuchar) based on stylized, often graphically sexual interpretations of his or her personality. The portraits also, at times, represent Curt's own sexual interests as he projects them onto the lives of others. My favorites are 'Barbara', a Pre-Raphaelite vision of woman and 'Ainslie', a musical spoof on glamour. The filmmaker's point of view ranges from compulsively erotic to light-hearted and self-debunking. A broad reading of the term 'romantic' would probably best describe the spectrum of extreme, even outrageous, possibilities which Curt embraces in this sketchbook/film." - Karen Cooper, Film Forum

A real and favorite dream of mine, preserved on film to be relived over and over.

A ritualistic mood piece with colour-rich images

An hour-long saga of Mick Terrific, rock 'n' roll star, and the cast of 50 he encounters on his search for "Mr. Wonderful." “PEED INTO THE WIND smears across the screen like one of those dirty underground comic books. It’s loaded with a lot of big scenes and unusual looking people that make this epic resemble a clogged toilet. Unfortunately, since several of the performers were not as loyal as Ainslie Pryor and John Thomas, the plot is difficult to follow but in no way hinders the sewer-like sequences. It’s quite enjoyable and possesses the releasing power of an enema.” –George Kuchar. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.

Portrait of siblings George and Mike Kuchar, who have made a name for themselves in the US underground scene with low-budget films.

Starring George Kuchar as "Hunk", Mrs. Ruby B. Davis as "Aunt Ruth", and introducing Melinda McDowell as the much-abused, sex bomb "Goldenrod".

This movie was made mostly in Brooklyn during some very hot and empty evenings. Since the evenings were so empty, Jane Elford, the star, urged me to get started making another movie (we had completed PAGAN RHAPSODY the year before). I said "okay," and launched her in a photographed series of telephone calls, not really knowing who was going to be on the other end. I was interested at the time in irrational, neurotic responses and so the heroine was put into unstable situations that I dreamt up because I was making a movie with a plot and there should be some action .... Many of the stars appear nude and all I can say is that because of the heat and the general, overall feeling of the film which is one of the usual desperation and explosive emotions, I couldn't see any other way of them playing it. The general tone of everything was ... "Why even bother to get dressed?"

The Shadow Glass is roughly based on Ewers' 'Student of Prague'. It concerns a young man who, feeling incapable of surmounting the harsh realities of love and life, sends his reflection cut to procure and win for him the object of his desire. Rather than being his servant and slave, the reflection takes over and controls the life of the man. In frustration and anger the man kills his reflection in order to be set free. The reality of the situation is the reality of suicide. The entire film could be interpreted as taking place in a brief second–for as long as it takes pull the trigger.

In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

A young man's struggle with his sexuality overtakes his life, driving him deep into his subconscious where guilt and fears of physicality chase him still further. Cornered by an intangible terror, he realises he must either break out or break down.

The movie takes a rather negative look at things despite the fact that it was shot in reversal film. It depicts the turbulent relationships of disturbed individuals existing on various levels of an apartment house. Donna Kerness and her husband Hopeton Morris are lurid together and they are also pretty lurid when they're alone.

A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixities, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever. A German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties revolution in art, music, poetry and film and interviews the main players in the “New American Cinema,” that was born on the streets of New York. Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval in all of the arts and growing political agitation against the Vietnam War, Bachman interviews the most prominent figures in “underground film,” including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers and Bruce Connor, and visits the most notorious location in the New York art world of the era - Andy Warhol’s Factory - to conduct an interview with the genius of Pop Art himself.

“LUST FOR ECSTASY is my most ambitious attempt since my last film…. I wrote many of the pungent scenes on the D train, and when I arrived on the set I ripped them up and let my emotional whims make chopped meat out of the performances and the story…. Yes, LUST FOR ECSTASY is my subconscious, my own naked lusts that sweep across the screen in 8mm and color with full fidelity sound.” – George Kuchar

Corruption of the Damned might seethe with violence and sex, the two most attractive things you can put on the screen, but beneath them a twisted outlook pervades.

Made when I was a bit depressed which is nothing new,. Bob Cowan happened to be depressed as well and so we had a wonderful time working together. One of the actresses was separated from her husband at this time and the movie solidifies into concrete the repressed desires of everyone.

(1962) Color, Sound, 9 min.

Lost film featuring vignettes of individual couples in a bathtub

"A film counterpointing the hard reality of the present with the fantastic actuality or imagining of the idyllic past. This is best realized in the halting transition from the journey through time back to the watery one that evoked." –Ken Kelman

An early masterpiece by Mike Kuchar, in which Babette tells all, leaving no turgid stone unturned.

Mike Kuchar'ss lyrical portrait of everyday life, from making art to making love, all as the Vietnam War rages.