Film & Digital Media Visiting Artist Series - Film Theory and Praxis Visiting Artist George Kuchar George Kuchar ranks among the most exciting and prolific independent videomakers working today. With his homemade Super-8 and 16mm potboilers and melodramas of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, he became legendary as one of the most distinctive and outrageous American underground filmmakers. Always working within the constraints of minuscule budgets and nonprofessional actors, Kuchar’s inspiration comes from classic Hollywood melodrama.
His cheaply made pictures blossomed in the shackles of poverty; the garish colors of the cheap makeup and sets were complemented by the bold color range afforded by Kodachrome reversal stock. The wild acting, use of stock music, lack of synch sound, hyperbolic narration, and primitive special effects all combined to make tiny gems unlike anything seen before or since. After his transition to the video medium in the 1980s, he remained a master of genre manipulation and subversion, creating dozens of brilliantly edited, hilarious, observant, often diaristic tapes with an 8mm camcorder, dime-store props, not-so-special effects, and using friends as actors and the "pageant that is life" as his studio. George Kuchar is cited as a major influence by such filmmakers as John Waters, Todd Solondz, and David Lynch. In 1992, Kuchar received the prestigious Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video Artists from the American Film Institute. He currently teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he makes many of his tapes in collaboration with his students. Kuchar will be discussing his work as a filmmaker in this first installment of F&DM's Visiting Artist Series. Sponsored by Film & Digital Media and Porter College.