Mon, Dec 4 at 7:00 PM - Sat, Dec 9 at 9:00 PM PST
The Clinton Street Theater
2522 Southeast Clinton Street
Portland, OR 97202
Maestros of the avant-garde and born in the same Bronx hospital as fellow queer hunk Tab Hunter, twin brothers George & Mike Kuchar created entire worlds in Super 8 and 16mm. Exploring themes of sexuality, identity, and everyday life; they had a distinct style that combined elements of kitsch and surrealism while casting friends and fellow misanthropes as actors.
Their films are often characterized by low budgets, camp aesthetics, and a unique blend of Sirkian melodrama and bizarre comedy. Their work is considered a significant part of the history of underground and experimental cinema, serving as an inspiration to the likes of John Waters, Todd Solondz, Greg Araki, and David Lynch.
Read MoreFriday, September 22, 2023
7:30pm PT
Special guest: Post-screening conversation with filmmaker Mike Kuchar.
“George and Mike Kuchar’s films were my first inspiration… these were the pivotal films of my youth, bigger influences than Warhol, Kenneth Anger, even The Wizard of Oz. Here were directors I could idolize—complete crackpots without an ounce of pretension, outsiders to even ‘underground’ sensibilities who made exactly the films they wanted to make without any money, starring their friends.” – John Waters
Read MoreIntro by filmmaker Zackary Drucker; Florrie Burke, widow of Barbara Hammer.
Collectively, Outfest, IndieCollect and UCLA are committed to sharing LGBTQ+ moving images in order to bring diverse communities together to discuss differing, often radical explorations of sexual orientation and gender identity. From this shared vision, the Pioneers of Queer Cinema program was conceived. The organizers and supporters of this series hope to introduce and reacquaint audiences with landmark queer works and their makers, while inspiring new conversations and renewed action surrounding the complex obstacles LGBTQ+ communities continue to face.
Program includes Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks (1947), Mike Kuchar’s Seascape (1984), Zackary Drucker’s At Least You Know You Exist (2011) and Barbara Hammer’s Nitrate Kisses (1992).
Read MoreArtist-run spaces are an integral part of a vibrant art community. From microcinemas to warehouse spaces to apartment galleries, no healthy art ecosystem can exist without some forms of independent and DIY organizations. With this thought in mind, we are pleased to present the VDB TV program, This Must Be the Space: A Video Conversation on Artist-Run and Artist-Inhabited Spaces, programmed by Emily Eddy, the director of Chicago’s Nightingale Cinema which recently closed their physical space of 14 years.
Emily has also written a delightful and insightful accompanying essay that chronicles some of the Nightingale’s history and ties it into several ideas explored in the works featured in the program by Videofreex, Nazli Dinçel, Glenn Belverio, George Kuchar, Anne McGuire, and Tom Rubnitz. The works range in dates from 1971-2016, consist of disparate styles, and focus on a variety of scenes, but they all illustrate aspects of why the experimentation of the artist-run space is vital in our communities.
Read MoreOn the occasion of Tom of Finland’s birthday (8th May), Tom of Finland Foundation and The Community have curated a group exhibition, supported by Diesel, presenting Tom of Finland Foundation’s permanent collection.
All Together explores the erotic art collection consisting of thousands of artworks, spanning multiple decades and encompassing all media and techniques. This exhibition is possible because of the Foundation’s efforts in preserving the work of Queer artists, many of whom have faced discrimination and misrepresentation due to the nature of what they create.
For thirty-seven years, Tom of Finland Foundation has been building the world’s most extensive collection of LGBTQ+ art. The diverse curation of this show highlights the stories of over seventy featured artists and comprises more than two hundred works of art from the 1940s to the present day.
The opening in Venice coincides with the first weekend of the Venice Biennale and the opening in Paris celebrates Tom’s birth date.
Read MoreBarbara Hammer’s debut feature Nitrate Kisses (1992) integrates the experiences of a diverse sampling of figures from the LGBTQ+ community—including a mixed-race gay couple, representative of the S/M community, and an older lesbian couple—with footage from Lot in Sodom (1933), one of the first American films to make explicit reference to homosexuality. With Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks (1947), a shoot-the-works celebration of outlawed sexuality; Mike Kuchar’s Seascape (1984), a gorgeous landscape film of ancient and echoing meanings paying homage to a lithe young muse caught at intersection of land and sea; and At Least You Know You Exist (2011), trans artist Zachary Drucker’s collaboration with elder and activist Flawless Sabrina, both together onscreen after the latter gives a stirring recitation of an essay on the false promises of capitalism and consumption.
Read MoreGeorge and Mike Kuchar entered the underground as Bronx teenagers who were making visionary 8mm approximations of Hollywood spectaculars, providing, in the process, a kind of roadmap for the camp-punk stylings of later auteurs like John Waters. This program, comprised of three early efforts by the duo, includes: Tootsies in Autumn, wherein a group of past-their-prime stage actors descend into madness as they fight and bicker amongst themselves; A Town Called Tempest, a typically torrid melodrama concerning extreme weather conditions; and the tragicomic Lovers of Eternity, in which a lonesome hipster poet makes friends with a succession of bizarre characters atop a squalid New York rooftop in a latter-day Garden of Eden, complete with a cast featuring Jack Smith, filmmaker Dov Lederberg, and an enormous cockroach. A Town Called Tempest is preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Tootsies in Autumn and Lovers of Eternity are preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Read MoreFor the second in the series, Hall offers up an alternative Valentine's Day special double feature of unorthodox sexuality and desire, which includes Mike Kuchar’s Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965) and Mary Reid Kelley's Swinburne’s Pasiphae (2014). Set a million years from now, Sins of the Fleshapoids reveals a debased future where humanity has forsaken science for self-indulgence and erotic pleasure. A race of enslaved Androids, undertakes all labour, until a rebellious Robot, tired of pleasuring his masters, decides to join the humans in sin.
Read MoreMetrograph presents “DINGLEBERRY JINGLES: YULETIDE OFFERINGS FROM GEORGE KUCHAR”— a live screening introduced by filmmaker Andrew Lampert.
Read MoreThanksgiving, Winter Solstice, Christmas, New Year — George Kuchar never missed an opportunity for a celebration and a good meal. We invite you to vicariously partake of seasonal sensations, all but absent throughout this most strange of years.
Read MoreThanks to the efforts of the Kuchar Brothers Trust, in collaboration with Anthology and Francois Ghebaly Gallery, Mike Kuchar’s DEATH QUEST OF THE JU-JU CULTS, has been newly restored! Arguably Mike’s solo magnum opus, DEATH QUEST is a mini-epic that gleefully and lovingly combines two of Mike’s favorite – if seemingly irreconcilable – genres. What appears at first to be a straightforward prehistoric tale soon morphs into something else entirely, with the deux ex machina appearance of…sorry, no spoilers. In any case, whatever the genre, DEATH QUEST was made with a nearly non-existent budget, but with admirably game actors, Mike’s uniquely resourceful visual gifts, and his inimitable ability to combine mischievous parody with wide-eyed sincerity.
Read MoreNew online exhibition presents George Kuchar’s film Going Nowhere, a video diary recording Kuchar’s 50th birthday at his dusty apartment and his melancholic interaction with the world through a screen. The exhibition lasts for a week, 1-7 April, on our website.
Read MoreREDCAT is delighted to welcome legendary artist Mike Kuchar for a program of films and videos made by himself and his late twin brother George. Iconic figures who helped define underground film in the 1960s, George and Mike began making no-budget 8mm films in the Bronx while still in their teens. Working with neighbors and friends, the Kuchars created lurid and hilarious takeoffs of Hollywood weepies that made a huge impact on notions of camp and new possibilities for queer cinema, and influenced a generation that included Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and many others. Mike Kuchar, whose visual art is on display at François Ghebaly Gallery, will be on hand to show recent videos and reminisce.
Read MoreMike Kuchar
Broken Gods
January 4 - February 2, 2020
Reception: Saturday January 11, 6-9pm
Read MoreMills Folly Microcinema, Madison’s newest experimental film showcase, is taking a trip down the personal rabbit hole of a very naughty rabbit with Melodrama/Melodiary: Three Videos by George Kuchar.
Kuchar was active in the experimental film scene for more than five decades until his death in 2011. A compulsive artist, he made roughly 250 films, many of them “diaries” of his day-to-day life. Campy, raunchy and arguably vile, he was a hero to none other than the Pope of Trash himself, director John Waters. In an introduction to a memoir written by Kuchar and his twin brother, Mike, Waters describes the brothers as his “first inspiration … a bigger inspiration than Warhol, Kenneth Anger, even The Wizard of Oz.”
Read MoreThe bad artist, in some sense, doesn’t live in this world—“this world” being the sphere of existence governed by a real or imagined consensus—or else, dwells in this world in order to contaminate it, to draw attention to those things ungovernable by the socius. That which is excessive, that which we look away from in disgust. These things, this scum, being the primary focus of artists like Dieter Roth and George Kuchar throughout the duration of their long working lives.
Read MoreMike Kuchar in Ghebaly Gallery’s group exhibition Liquid Dreams.
Read MoreOpening reception for Drawings by Mike! at Anton Kern Gallery on Thursday, September 7th from 6–8pm. Exhibition runs until October 7th, 2017. In conjunction with the exhibition, a screening of select films, including Kuchar’s seminal Sins of the Fleshapoids, will be shown at the Core Club Cinema on Friday, September 8, 2017 from 7 p.m. RSVP is required for this event. For more information please contact Nadia Fristensky at rsvp@antonkerngallery.com.
Read MoreMike Kuchar has been nominated as one of the film/video Guggenheim fellows of 2017. The winners were culled from nearly 3,000 applicants and represent 49 disciplines and artistic fields, 64 academic institutions and 27 states and the District of Columbia. The recipients range in age from 27 to 79. The size of grants vary and are given for six months to one year, depending on the scope of the project.
Read MoreMike Kuchar is a true San Francisco treasure. His uncompromising output spans more than sixty years, and reminds us of the often forgotten value of individual vision and non-conformity. The few meetings I have had with Mike always leave me feeling completely inspired, and this time was no exception. Below are excerpts from that wide ranging two-hour conversation, between Mike, Gordon, and myself, which took place in my studio on May 18th, 2016.
—Matt Borruso
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