2012 Biennial: George Kuchar

In this video, Ed Halter and Thomas Beard, the co-curators of the film program of the 2012 Biennial, discuss the work of Biennial artist George Kuchar.

"In some ways you could call him this fleshy conscious of the avant-garde. Through comedy he is reminding us that we are all mortal." – Ed Halter

Felix Bernstein's interview with George Kuchar

George Kuchar Summer Diary 2010

George Kuchar's final Provincetown summer diary. From PennSound Cinema.

George Kuchar in Conversation with Charles Bernstein

GEORGE KUCHAR TV INTERVIEW 2000 KQED/PBS with Michael Fox

George talks about his video Secrets of the Shadow World.

2005 Interview by Steve Reinke

Beloved by filmmakers such as John Waters and Todd Solondz, George Kuchar has been working with the moving image for nearly half a century. In the 1950s, Kuchar and his twin brother Mike began producing ultra-low-budget underground versions of Hollywood genre films, with names like I Was a Teenage Rumpot and The Devil's Cleavage. These 8mm kitchen-sink masterpieces bore the distinctive marks of what Susan Sontag called “camp", and positioned the Kuchar brothers as the Bronx’s answer to the downtown underground filmmaking scene, which quickly adopted the Kuchars as their own—and in the work of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and others, showed their influence.

Since the 1980s, Kuchar has been creating brilliantly edited, hilarious, and often diaristic tapes made with dime-store props and not-so-special effects, using friends as actors and the “pageant that is life” for his studio. In this interview, Kuchar, in a generous, gregarious mood despite the Manhattan summer humidity, discusses his life and the full range of his work from the early collaborative films to his most recent tapes. Conversational anecdotes, frank and witty, provide insight into Kuchar's working methods, as well as the work itself and its reception in various quarters.

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

George Kuchar interviewed by P. Adams Sitney on WNYC

As a Bronx native working in the midst Andy Warhol’s Factory and a gallery-centric conceptual cinema arts scene, Kuchar offered a refreshingly different perspective on the possibilities of story-driven film-making. Along with his twin brother Mike, George created a fantastical oeuvre of campy and heartfelt homages to the world of Classic Hollywood cinema. His inventiveness and humor attracted many admirers, including John Waters and David Lynch.

In this episode of WNYC's Arts Forum from January 2, 1976, film scholar and guest host P. Adams Sitney interviews George Kuchar about his latest script for the film Thundercrack! (1975). Kuchar describes his process, the pornographic nature of the film, and his upcoming projects