George and Mike Kuchar are featured in Los Angeles, April 13th and 14th

Los Angeles Filmforum, the Free Form Film Festival, and Video Data Bank present:Point and Shoot: Videos by George KucharSaturday April 13th, 2013, 7:30 pmMike Kuchar and Video Data Bank Collection Manager Tom Colley in person!Filmforum pays tribute to the late, great George Kuchar with an evening of his video work.  While most widely known for his early underground films, George made nearly 300 remarkable videos, most notably his Weather Diary series.  This program was curated by Abina Manning of Video Data Bank and includes many Los Angeles premieres!Screening:
Point 'n Shoot (1989, 5:08)A lavish home is visited, shutters click, bottoms are exposed, water splashes and a welcome wetness stains an area unquenched for so long. A jacuzzi bubbles to life in a bedroom community that floats to sleep on aqua-filled rubber.Route 666 (1994, 7:51)The strings of fate manipulate the living and the dead against a landscape of water vapor and watercolors which make more palatable the unacceptable and the undigestable.Season of Sorrow (1996, 12:23)Ice falls from the sky as tears plip-plop onto wall-to-wall carpeting. No degree of renovation can enliven the dead that we mourn in our hearts as the storm of the centuries assails our heads with memories of the passing parade that got rained on. A weather diary of May-time misery.Uncle Evil (1996, 7:02)The young and the innocent at the mercy of a palpable presence oozing menace and scarlet-stained goodness as a strawberry sundae melts under the glare of future hell-firestorms in search of kindling.Honey Bunnies On Ice (2001, 7:00)A winter chill sets in making the furry residents of various dwelling places a center of affection and reflection... Only the lure of mammalian fur promises a few precious moments of centigrade comfort in this zone of zero zoology.Burnout (2003, 19:47)A metropolis awash in electrical overdrive crashes in the heat of summer and sends a Bronxite into the clutches of a waterworld further north. It is there that we witness the cooling fogs and diving mammals of maritime yore and sail free in winds of a nautical nature.HotSpell (2011, 25:55)The Los Angeles premiere of George's final video.  A weather diary that travels through some rough inner and outer domains. Social interactions blend more smoothly than the clash of air masses which threaten to clobber a prairie town in a vortex of violence.  Flashbacks and flashpoints flare-up along with thunderheads that loom and boom with vibrations of doom, their every move charted with vivid vibrancy on videographic maps which detail developing devastation.  Desire and death are in the air along with some aromatic wisps of ethnic edibles, so be sure to sniff it all.All title descriptions written by George Kuchar.   Total running time 76 minutes.  All works show on video, 4:3.
George Kuchar (1942-2011) ranks as one of the most exciting and prolific American independent film- and videomakers. With his homemade Super 8 and 16mm potboilers and melodramas of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, he became legendary as a distinctive and outrageous underground filmmaker whose work influenced many other artists, including Andy Warhol, John Waters and David Lynch. After his 1980s transition to the video medium, he remained a master of genre manipulation and subversion, creating hundreds of brilliantly edited, hilarious, observant, often diaristic videos 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. 
 
Starbound: New Videos by Mike KucharSunday April 14th, 2013, 7:30 pmWith Mike Kuchar, Free Form Film Festival curator Ryan Wylie, and Video Data Bank Collection Manager Tom Colley in person! Mike Kuchar returns to Filmforum with new video works. Mixing the romantic yearnings of poetic souls, strapping young men, and the eloquent and peculiar fascination that he has for aliens and architecture, Mike Kuchar continues to produce his own unique brand of video art. Join us for a very special evening, which will probably include a couple of Mike’s actors as well.Screening (subject to change):Echo's Garden (2010, 11:00)"Great woods, you frighten me like some cathedral's gloom, and awaken pastoral pipes on pagan heights." -- Mike KucharDumped (2009, 10:20)Life staggers on... and the horrors in one's existence continue.Animal (2009, 16:38)Masked men prowling in the bushes and not touching anything but satin, dandelions and flesh.The Stone Boy (2011, 6:00)Filmed in Los Angeles, featuring Huckleberry Lain.“He hears the whispers of gargoyles in a hall of heavy stone.” -- Mike KucharMidnight Suite (2011, 6:00)Featuring Monica Angrand.“Run, unholy woman; your passions deceive you!” -- Mike KucharStarbound (2012, 47:00)"At the 'Institute for Metaphysical Research and Spiritual Wellness', crackpots, perverts and guitar strumming UFO abductees struggle with the supernatural and their own carnal needs." -- Mike Kuchar"A story of galactic pollination and entropic aloneness with a caricaturesque, cosmogasmic, orchestral ensemble of hints and hits and carbon glittered glints of unbound chemical incontinence." –- Ryan WylieTotal running time 97 minutes. All works shown on video.Mike Kuchar, cinematographer, painter, and writer and brother of George Kuchar, was born in New York City. He began making 8mm movies in the 1950s, switching over to 16mm film production in 1960, and continues now, producing short motion pictures in the video and digital formats. Mike and George Kuchar were the co-recipients of the "Vanguard Director Award" at the 11th CineVegas Film Festival, 2009, and the 2009 "Frameline Award" at the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.SCREENING DETAILS, BOTH NIGHTS Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028. 
Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members.  Available by credit card in advance from Brown Paper Tickets or at the door.