Underground Film Journal

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NW Film Center: An Evening With George Kuchar

By Mike Everleth ⋅ January 31, 2010

NW logo for the Northwest Film Center

Feb. 2
7:00 p.m.
NW Film Center
Whitsell Auditorium
1219 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97205

Hosted by: NW Film Center

Legendary and influential underground filmmaker George Kuchar will screen four recent short films, the full list of which is below.

There’s a real resurgent interest in Kuchar’s work lately. He’s certainly one of the most prolific underground filmmakers of all time having made something over 200 films over his career, which dates back to his teenage days in the ’50s co-directing campy odes to old Hollywood with his twin brother Mike. George is also one of the few underground filmmakers from the ’60s who actively and enthusiastically embraced the use of video to make films.

George Kuchar looks at Bigfoot

Some of that old campy sensibility can be seen in his newer works, but he also makes films that are more diary-oriented. Plus, many of his films are made in collaboration with his students at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Here are the films that will be screening at this event, with descriptions provided by the NW Film Center:

The Hairy Horror (2009). “A short meditation on a tall terror in the trees that shade shadowy giants from the glare of sanity.

Burrito Bay (2009). “A video diary about the making of another of his films, Tropical Vulture, which ‘blends Hollywood glamour and drama with an all-too-real-life approach.'”

Portrait of Genie (2008). “An ex-student of mine opens up in the privacy of her home and shows me her etchings (watercolors) as we talk of art and things that slip under the fabric of daily attire.”

X Mass (2008). “A California winter turns the left coast into a brew of foaming festivities while landlubbers leap for joy in the spray of salty slurping.”