September 17 – October 30, 2016
Curated by Jordan Stein
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 17, 6 – 9 PM
George Kuchar (1942–2011) documented his gastronomic, meteorological, and libidinal desires in hundreds of film and video productions across four decades. An appetite for intimacy drove many of his first-person adventures, perhaps most tenderly in THE MONGRELOID (1978), a 16mm love-letter to his treasured mutt, Bocko. In nine absurd minutes, Kuchar walks the indifferent animal down memory lane, reflecting mostly on posterior matters: "How's your operation on your behind? You had that 400 dollar operation on your tushy, remember that?"
Read MoreJuly 23, 2016
Mike Kuchar was born in the Bronx in New York in 1942, a few minutes before his twin, George. At age 12, the twins started to make films using an 8mm camera their mother gave them. They became central to the 1960s New York underground film scene, screening work alongside Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and Jack Smith.
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
Read MoreGeorge Kuchar is one of the great artists in the history of the moving image…We are amazed by the craft, the perfect cues, the skillful edits, the startling images and visual rhymes, the flawless pacing and ingenious continuity, often achieved spontaneously, in camera. His images can be both insanely bizarre and rapturously beautiful, with a hallucinatoryotherness seldom achieved by even the most visionary artists in film history…
Read MoreIt had long been the dream of Melinda McDowell-Milks, Curt McDowell’s sister, to stage an event where the newly-restored Directors Cut of Thundercrack! (1975) could be seen in San Francisco on the Castro Theater’s giant screen. Synapse Films—responsible for the restoration work in preparation for the film’s forty-year anniversary—gave her permission.”Go ahead. Do it.” But having never done anything of the sort, she had no awareness of the mechanics involved, and didn’t know what she even needed to know.
Read MoreDecember 18, 2015 @ 7pm
Unique, prolific, emotional and funny, the filmmakers George Kuchar (1942 - 2011) and Anne Charlotte Robertson (1949 - 2012) both left behind many hours of moving image diaries, much of which is housed at the Harvard Film Archive. While the tones of their respective diaries are quite different, both Kuchar and Robertson cover similar leitmotifs, including food, the body, cats, family and the natural world. They also share the tradition of cinematically confronting the holiday season—a time that can be melancholy or festive, lonely or celebratory, and usually a bit of everything. Tonight we present a selection of their complementary, alternative visions of sugar plums.
Read MoreThursday, August 27 @ 7:30pm
Read MoreApril 11, 2015
This collection of films—which includes works rarely considered alongside one another—lends another perspective to the exhibition International Pop by examining cinema as an extension of Pop practice around the world.
Read MoreJanuary 29, 2015
“Movies should have sex appeal,” says Mike Kuchar. “It’s a basic fundamental quality and helps in making it bearable to watch.” It’s the same bravado that seared through the filmmaker’s lascivious, sugar-coated home videos made with his brother George and screened alongside friends Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekasand Andy Warhol in the New York underground film scene of the 1960s and 70s. Experimenting with 8mm film, the twin brothers from the Bronx conjured up their own camp, sexually charged pop fantasies in fleshly shades of violet, turquoise, and sunflower.
Read MoreJanuary 29, 2015
Burnished bubble butts beam with unholy light. Cut and uncut, huge, veiny cocks blossom from every angle. Angels and gods, gladiators and cavemen, street hustlers and bodybuilders, S-M beltings and four-way pirate fuckfests are all drawn with the bright hues and hard lines of comic-book superheroes.
Read MoreMIKE KUCHAR: Saints and Sinners, January 17 - February 14, 2015
François Ghebaly is pleased to host a New Year's banquet of beefcake celebrating Satyrs, Stone Age He-Men, Sugar Daddies, and Bawdy Buccaneers, drawn, painted, digitized, and hosted by underground cartoonist and movie maker, Mike Kuchar.
Read MoreGeorge Kuchar (1942-2011) is best known as a pioneering underground film and video maker with a disarming do-it-yourself aesthetic and a hilariously eccentric sensibility. Quirky and ingenious, heartfelt and campy, Kuchar's movies know no boundaries and are an entirely unique development in the history of cinema. The artist's characteristic instinct for kitsch, his humor and conceptual brilliance, were not confined to the screen alone; they can be glimpsed in all the activities he carried out throughout his life.
ON SALE AT AMAZON
Read MoreMIKE KUCHAR: Brave, Bold and Bare, November 8, 2014 - January 10, 2015
“What are these acts of creation we do in paint or on film? Are they linked or related to Creation itself—the very force that gives motion, light, and form to the universe... or am I just a guy warding off boredom with a hobby that substitutes for his loneliness?”
—Mike Kuchar
Read MoreSan Francisco Cinematheque Presents: A Criminal Account of Pleasure: The George Kuchar Reader
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Yerba Buena Center For The Arts
Andrew Lampert , the editor of The George Kuchar Reader (and Anthology Film Archives’ Curator of Collections) appears in person to read excerpts from the book and to discuss this legend. The program includes George Kuchar’s 16mm Corruption of the Damned and the video The Exiled Files of Eddie Gray.
Read MoreFriday, October 17 & Saturday, October 18, 2016
UP TO DATE & OUT OF THIS WORLD WITH MIKE KUCHAR!
He’s back! Yes, one-time NYC denizen Mike Kuchar makes an all-too-rare hometown appearance and return visit to Anthology. Beloved for the films he made in tandem with twin brother, George, as well as for his own over-the-top underground masterpieces, Mike is a prolific creator of moving images the likes of which you cannot imagine or even dream of. Kuchar’s work demonstrates a campy romantic eye and rapturous ear that is as indebted to lyrical poetry as it is to ecstatic imagery. Rather than rest on his voluminous back catalog, the videos that Mike has been making the last few years are undoubtedly amongst the strongest works in a career that began nearly 60 years ago.
Read MoreTHE GEORGE KUCHAR READER
Rare 16mm screening and book launch
The Sunshine Sisters (1972, 36 min, 16mm)
Aqueerius (1980, 8 min, 16mm)
Monday, October 13, 2014 / 7 PM
Read MoreBy the 1960s, twins George and Mike Kuchar were shaping the underground film scene alongside Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. It Came from Kuchar interweaves the brother's lives, their admirers and a 'greatest hits' of Kuchar clips into a hilarious and moving tale. A film by Jennifer Kroot.
Read MoreWednesday, August 25, 2014
Read MoreMonday, May 26, 2014
1966. USA. Directed by George Kuchar. With Donna Kerness, George Kuchar, Stella Kuchar, Andrea Lunin. The loosely autobiographical Hold Me While I’m Naked is both the story of a frustrated filmmaker trying to prove his artistic integrity through his next production, and Kuchar’s homage to Douglas Sirk’s lush Hollywood melodramas. 15 min.
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