George Kuchar
Birthday: 1942-08-31
Place of Birth: New York, New York
Biography: George Kuchar (August 31, 1942 – September 6, 2011) and his twin brother Mike began making films as teenagers in the 1950s, with 8mm film being their weapon of choice. After shocking their local amateur filmmaking club with their over-the-top stories of lust and angst, they became stars of the NYC underground scene in the 1960s, befriending the likes of Jonas Mekas and Jack Smith. Always working with the constraints of minuscule budgets and nonprofessional actors, the Kuchar’s inspiration comes from classic Hollywood melodrama. Their cheaply made pictures, rather than being held back by lack of funds, blossomed in the shackles of poverty; the garish colors of the cheap makeup and sets were perfectly complemented by the bold color range afforded by Kodachrome reversal stock. The wild (and sometimes the inverse of 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. The Kuchars are cited as major influences by such filmmakers as John Waters, Todd Solondz, and David Lynch.
Movies
Arizona Byways
A cactus-strewn desert becomes the backdrop for this series of filmic stopovers. Great natural beaut...
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The Warming of the Hell House
A trip across the bay to Concord yields a harvest of non-fruit-like beings who celebrate a housewarm...
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Foto Spread
A photographer comes to my home to take pictures and gets a lensful. His mouth and his shutter snap ...
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Kiss of the Veggie Vixen
A portrait of Marion Eaton, film and stage actress, etched with a green thumb and a brown nose....
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All Smiles and Sadness
McGuire constructs a murky black and white soap-opera world of endless, timeless, and placeless limb...
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The Shadow Glass
The Shadow Glass is roughly based on Ewers' 'Student of Prague'. It concerns a young man who, feelin...
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River Windows
"A film counterpointing the hard reality of the present with the fantastic actuality or imagining of...
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Andy Warhol's Unfinished Symphony
A clarification of the '60s and its plastic society; taking archetypes of the American landscape to ...
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George and Mike Kuchar
Portrait of siblings George and Mike Kuchar, who have made a name for themselves in the US undergrou...
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A Night with Gilda Peck
A vehicle for the talented Mrs. Kathleen Hohalek, as the tenant of the Pyramid Penthouse, with Georg...
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The Craven Sluck
A desperate, married woman meets a mysterious man who she blatantly desires. Through some twists and...
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Sins of the Fleshapoids
One million years in the future, the human survivors of a nuclear war are served by robots called "f...
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Brakhage
BRAKHAGE explores the depth and breadth of the filmmaker’s genius, the exquisite splendor of his fil...
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I, an Actress
An actress and a director run through a melodramatic scene, speaking to a mannequin....
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Wild Night in El Reno
"In the late spring of each year the Great Plains states of the U.S. experience a season characteris...
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Sherman Acres
A drama in six episodes involving psychological breakdowns, marital showdowns, and messy obsessions....
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Nudes: A Sketchbook
"Curt McDowell's NUDES (A Sketchbook) is a paean to the filmmaker's closest friends: a series of por...
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Taboo: The Single and the LP
"Abner L. Fuqua clears his throat and I get mad and stand close to trains or cut my eyebrow off. Dor...
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Anita Needs Me
An overheated tale of lust, guilt, and Mom, made as a response to the French New Wave....
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George Kuchar: An Interview
Since the 1980s, Kuchar has been creating brilliantly edited, hilarious, and often diaristic tapes m...
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Return to the House of Pain
Return to the House of Pain documents my walking through the turf and sludge of the Big Apple and ma...
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Weather Diary 1
George Kuchar travels to Oklahoma in search of tornadoes, spends most of his time watching TV and ea...
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Galaxie
In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his...
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Born of the Wind
A tender and realistic story of a scientist who falls in love with a mummy he has restored to life....
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Vault of Vapors
One of Kuchars weather diary series out in Oklahoma. The tone is wistful, the surroundings wispy (wi...
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The Butchered Beefcake
This video diary visits two sites that exhibited Kuchars visual works this past year, culminating at...
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Vintage Visits
Another edition to Kuchars weather diary series, this particular one has more social intercourse occ...
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The Nutrient Express
A trip to Winnipeg introduces the viewer to moments of Canadian cuisine and to the easily digestible...
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Tummy Ache Times
It's the season of joy once again and this video depicts the tasty and the troublesome in big, heapi...
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Calorie Cottage
Encompassing both Thanksgiving, Christmas and the exploding New Year's Eve celebrations, this holida...
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Delectable Destinations
This time, the call of the west sends Kuchar packing to Oregon, California and Arizona. You too can ...
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Hitchcocked!
A tribute to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, featuring contemporary filmmakers, writers, performers, a...
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Underground New York
A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixities, a turbul...
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Weather Diary 3
Set in and around an El Reno motel, the tape records George's growing friendship with a young weathe...
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Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton
A chronicle of the iconoclastic life of gay poet, filmmaker, and spiritual visionary James Broughton...
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The Mongreloid
A man, his dog, and the regions they inhabited, each leaving his own distinctive mark on the landsca...
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George
George (1976, revised in 1988) is a portrait of George Kuchar composed on a J-K optical printer with...
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Confessions
"Just as outrageous is Curt McDowell's CONFESSIONS. McDowell, a graduate student at San Francisco Ar...
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Boggy Depot
A musical for the whole family. A rural operette starring Ainslie Pryor and Geore Kuchar, told throu...
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Sparkle's Tavern
Siblings hide their ownership of a bordello from their mother. When she is visited by a man who shar...
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East by Southwest
A trip to Boston to visit a local filmmaker in his studio is followed by a journey to the cinematic ...
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True Blue and Dreamy
A real and favorite dream of mine, preserved on film to be relived over and over....
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Peed Into the Wind
An hour-long saga of Mick Terrific, rock 'n' roll star, and the cast of 50 he encounters on his sear...
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Eat My Makeup!
With George Kuchar, Marie Losier, Jason Livingston, Paul Shepard. Five winsome damsels picnic on the...
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Sunset After Dark
A struggling screenwriter finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation....
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Video Album 5: The Thursday People
The comings and goings of the late underground filmmaker, Curt McDowell—and the people and activitie...
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Wieners and Buns Musical
A musical about an unhappy couple and the man that stands between them. Preserved by the Academy Fi...
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Beaver Fever
Starring George Kuchar as "Hunk", Mrs. Ruby B. Davis as "Aunt Ruth", and introducing Melida McDowell...
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Electrocute Your Stars
In this dream portrait, George Kuchar travels through snow confetti, strobe flashes and artificial w...
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365 Day Project
This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calenda...
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Confessions of Babette
An early masterpiece by Mike Kuchar, in which Babette tells all, leaving no turgid stone unturned....
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Lust for Ecstasy
“LUST FOR ECSTASY is my most ambitious attempt since my last film…. I wrote many of the pungent scen...
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The Slasher
An insane, deformed killer stalks the grounds of a resort house, bringing sudden violence to those o...
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Night of the Bomb
The film combines teenage lust and deranged delinquency to create a cautionary tale for the ages....
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George Kuchar: The Comedy of the Underground
A documentary portrait of filmmaker George Kuchar conducting a tour of his apartment where he displa...
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Hold Me While I'm Naked
Presented as loosely autobiographical, Hold Me While I’m Naked centres on the tribulations of an ind...
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Divine Trash
The life and times of Baltimore film maker and midnight movie pioneer, John Waters....
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He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surro...
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Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Sm...
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Swamp
Swamp uses the soap opera format to play with the structure and expectations of the family melodrama...
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It Came from Kuchar
It Came from Kuchar is the definitive, feature documentary about the legendary, underground filmmaki...
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Meet The Kuchar Brothers
Provides a rare glimpse into the world of George and Mike Kuchar, underground filmmaking brothers fr...
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Gastronomic Getaway
Writes Kuchar, "The magnificent Mono Lake becomes the centerpiece for this car trip through Yosemite...
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A Passage to Wetness
An island. A mountain. A City of Angels who scoop up the pellets dropped by other winged creatures....
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Pictures at an Exhibitionist’s
A wide-ranging look at pictures I collect on my walls and in my head. A look at pictures I concoct w...
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Cellar Sinema
A descent into the blackness of the projected image and the curators who flick the switches and grea...
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Indian Summer
The colors of fall are muted by the fog of a lingering summer and the memory of that which is dark a...
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Migration of the Blubberoids
"The whiteness of winter cannot bury the blubbery things that splash and frolic among the frozen mem...
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Fill Thy Crack with Whiteness
A music-filled tour of Christmas good cheer overtakes this gastronomically oriented excursion throug...
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Rainy Season
Thanksgiving in California is the setting in which the viewer experiences "the depression inherent t...
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Tootsies in Autumn
[A] cautionary tale about past-their-prime thespians caught up in a typically Kucharian vortex of ma...
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The Secret of Wendel Samson
A young man's struggle with his sexuality overtakes his life, driving him deep into his subconscious...
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Portrait of Ramona
This movie was made mostly in Brooklyn during some very hot and empty evenings. Since the evenings w...
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Urchins of Ungawa
In a garden of roses and memorabilia from darkest Africa, a man and woman ponder the joy of cooking ...
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Chigger Country
Pastures filled with the bounty of a meateater's fantasy fill the screen with bellows of bovine orig...
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Visitation Rites
Alone in an Oklahoma motel room with a mute companion, the talkative one speaks the language of memo...
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3 Stories About Evil
A very black mix of comedy about relationships, the media, children's beauty pageants, sex change op...
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Chili Line Stops Here
A journey that begins in a Kansas City hotel and ends up in New Mexico. The bumpy ride is fuelled wi...
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Precious Products
In Precious Products we are subtly reminded of this country’s obsession with consumerism and narciss...
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Oh Hi Anne
An epic tale of love and loss. Made using voicemails the Kuchar brothers left on her home answering ...
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Weather Watch
A window or two on the outside world is not enough, especially when you have such a lousy view of th...
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That Woman
That Woman uses as source material the original Barbara Walters interview with Monica Lewinsky, whic...
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Bill's Hat
"The whole film are non-art portraits of people in which they do what they want with this hat – and ...
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Chronicles
Mike Kuchar'ss lyrical portrait of everyday life, from making art to making love, all as the Vietnam...
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Portrait of Genie
An ex-student of mine opens up in the privacy of her home and shows me her etchings (watercolors) as...
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Secrets of the Shadow World
This three-part mini-series explores the mysterious and the mundane in a splash of digital dioramas ...
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Webtide
Once again a seaside serenade of sloshing oils and simmering scallops fills the crannies of Cape Cod...
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Water Sports
A trip to the Marin headlands at the Golden Gate of San Francisco Bay headlines this video diary. Th...
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Encyclopedia of the Blessed
" ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BLESSED culminates my involvement with artist Red Grooms and Mimi Gross. It i...
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Cult of the Cubicles
Writes Kuchar: "It's New York in the summer and I set out to track down some high school friends who...
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500 Millibars to Ecstasy
The dark and sloppy side of touring college towns with your work. An internal expose of external sec...
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The Kingdom By The Sea
The spirit of poets permeates the space/time occupied by an assortment of dinner engagements that oc...
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Burnout
A metropolis awash in electrical overdrive crashes in the heat of summer and sends a Bronxite into t...
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Scarlet Droppings
Taped in Normal, Illinois, during the height of autumn, a snapshot of a young girl triggers a medita...
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Point 'n Shoot
A lavish home is visited, shutters click, bottoms are exposed, water splashes and a welcome wetness ...
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Rocky Interlude
A trip to a barren landscape of jagged peaks and deep crevasses becomes a playground for an over-dre...
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Snap 'n Snatch
A sort-of music video that focuses on and under young women and men engaged in focusing video and mo...
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Award
A behind-the-scenes look at the man behind the trophy and the poisons that taint an otherwise jubila...
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Uncle Evil
The young and the innocent at the mercy of a palpable presence oozing menace and scarlet-stained goo...
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Supercell
Clouds abound in this short meditation on vaporous masses that flow across the borders of our window...
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Song of the Whoopee Wind
A California Christmas season ushers in an array of holiday visuals designed to feed the hunger of s...
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The Inmate
The splendor of a mountain lake is clouded by the musings of a brain in memory mode. The head relive...
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Metropolitan Monologues
The New York City summer is fueled by the sultry emanations of hot air that tumble off the tongues o...
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The Hairy Horror
A chance encounter with a sober student reveals the mystery of a woodland wonder that has left a mar...
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Screamplay
A talented writer, Edgar Allen, arrives in Hollywood with big dreams but is quickly pulled into a wo...
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Thundercrack!
An eccentric and alcoholic widow hosts a motley assortment of travelers - four men, three women and ...
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Coven of the Heathenites
A summer sojourn is fleshed out for maximum solar exposure in this video travelogue of sun, sea and ...
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Law of Desire
The story of Trelita, a Chicana sex worker with an abusive boss and a dead boyfriend (who she may or...
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Going Nowhere
Writes Kuchar: "It was my 50th birthday this year (1992) and my friend's birthday, so I explored our...
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Xmas 1987 New Years
A sweet and savory journey in the company of George traveling from Christmas to New Years, stopping ...
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Season of Sorrow
Ice falls from the sky as tears plip-plop onto wall-to-wall carpeting. No degree of renovation can e...
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Domain of the Pixel Pixies
Sort of a portrait of the videomaker Anne McQuire, who surfaces midway from this waterlogged landsca...
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Bongwater
David is an artist and a pothead. He's fallen in love with the beautiful and sexy Serena, and things...
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Xmas 1986
"In Xmas 1986, George Kuchar’s mother Stella has come to stay with him for the holidays. After a ser...
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Maggots and Men
A utopian re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921, featuring film history's first cast of ove...
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Tropical Vulture
Tropical Vulture is a cross-generational project which highlights the artistic influences between Ge...
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Dingleberry Jingles
In Dingleberry Jingles, George discusses all things Christmas with his cat, attends a wedding, and o...
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Tomorrow Always Comes
A 1940s campy film noir sex romp comedy thriller. Harlem, Chinatown, Park Ave. It’s the same old sto...
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Vermin of the Vortex
Alienation in academia beneath the chandeliered opulence of a political correctional facility that c...
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Bayou of the Blue Behemoth
The waters run deep as massive jaws chomp and bubbles burst in a world gone mad with technological d...
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Why Are You Weird?
Curtis Jackson is studying performance art at one of the most prestigious art schools in the nation,...
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Bloodrape
Notorious underground all-girl vampXcore band Bloodrape sets out on a reunion tour to destroy everyo...
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L.A. Screening Workshop
George spends a week in Los Angeles on business and at eating engagements. “I eat in Beverly Hills a...
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The Gates of Gomorrah
Shutters click in this clothes-dropping exhibition of photographic exposures sure to quicken the pul...
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Mecca of the Frigid
George visits underground filmmaker Robert Nelson in Milwaukee, and they brave the cold on Lake Mich...
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Lumps of Joy
A holiday video of good cheer and feline ferocity, this annual tradition of videotaped festivities c...
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The Unmentionables
Frisco anxiously awaits the pyrotechnic birth of a New Year while the remnants of holiday greenery s...
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Meow Meow
An animated short about a man who finds a cat that turns into a lion. The lion becomes a famous sing...
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