When George Kuchar (1942-2011) started using video in the mid-eighties, he already had an extensive celluloid collection behind him, starting in his adolescence, beside his twin brother Mike, and then on his own. His hilarious parodies of Hollywood cinema and sexploitation had made him an emblematic figure in the US experimental cinema of the sixties and seventies. The transition to video (using cheap formats like 8mm Camcorder and Hi8, and then Mini DV and Digital8) was accompanied by a turn towards everyday life on the filmmaker’s part, portrayed with a blend of lyricism, humour and an acute sense of the absurd. Kuchar’s low-budget videos, often edited on the camera, with his hilarious running commentaries, take us into the most private corners of his private life and explore his obsessions with cyclones, UFOs, food and sex, as well as his more melancholic works dealing with the passage of time, ageing and death.
Weather Diary 3, George Kuchar, 1988, 25 min; Migration of the Blubberoids, George Kuchar, 1989, 12 min; Fill Thy Crack with Whiteness, George Kuchar, 1989, 11 min; Dial a Kvetch, George Kuchar, 1993, 19 min; Season of Sorrow, George Kuchar, 1996, 12 min; Terror by Twilight, George Kuchar, 1988 colour, 6 min. Video screening.
