Humor

A more socially-active addition to the Weather Diary series, we meet the natives and participate in the rituals of business and schooling and high hopes on the flatlands.

Scenes from a vacation. Music comes on loud and clear and washes over a series of visual impressions of the land and the sky and the faulty plumbing that submerges porcelain bottoms in a sea of unmentionable froth.

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

A window or two on the outside world is not enough, especially when you have such a lousy view of things as I had in this Oklahoma residential care home. The majesty of the console-model TV gave new dimension to the concept of time and space, and shrank it all down to a 21-inch lump of nature—a 21-incher that didn’t smell and permeate the atmosphere with discomfiture. A meditation on the elsewhere and wanting to be there.

A non-stop, psychedelic action serial depicting the gnawing bitterness of a UFO debunker as he sinks in a sea of new age imagery and nubile neophytes.

Once again a seaside serenade of sloshing oils and simmering scallops fills the crannies of Cape Cod with dingle-berries of dubious delight!  Join a crew of crustacean craving civilians as they shuck their shells of inhibitions to become the truly truculent trespassers of a salty sanctuary.  Visit the chefs of chivalry as they skewer the squeamish with talons of titillating tidbits, each one a calorie crunching course in obese obtrusiveness and opulent oddness.  Come one, come all, and sample a smorgasbord of simple pleasures in this vacation video of vicarious vacillations.

It was 1990 and, although the iron curtain was falling, Soviet official control was still iron-fisted.  Camcorder reporter Skip Blumberg went along with a group of art aficionados on a tour of the Moscow studios of the unofficial artists, an underground community of talented, courageous and often wacky conceptual artists.  His report reveals an insider’s view of the art world and, at the same time, is a video about making a video.

Two young women confront careers in a world of violence, lust, and show-business. This student/teacher co-production I made at the San Francisco Art Institute is a colorful collage of digital dementia.

George Barber doffs his cap to the 20th anniversary of Scratch Video with What’s That Sound?, a mesmerizing montage of questions, answers, and the cries and screams of people caught in a disaster movie. The work uses as its starting point, the film Airport '77 where, improbably, a jumbo jet sinks to the bottom of the sea. What follows is a clever amalgamation of absurd linguistics, cries and shouts, highlighting the artist’s permanent fascination with speech, and human reaction to out-of-the-ordinary situations.

This video was originally part of an installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art, part of which included the video collaboration Channels of Desire. Recreating coin-operated porno booths, Channels aired one photo image on seven TVs, interrupted only by the viewer inserting a coin and choosing a segment. The concept behind it was the construction of desire in categorical ways, the form of the piece speaking to sexual desire as something that is constantly evading the viewer. The images presented women’s experiences with interracial, lesbian, and heterosexual encounters.

Repurposing an ancient confessional video diary made about 40 years ago, this 11-minute narrative creates a poignant and humorous conversation where both ‘selves’ question, enlighten, and warn one another about things in life that really matter.

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

In this wistful tape, Segalove looks at how her childhood vision of the future holds up (or doesn't) in adulthood. Commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Using the first color video camera, the artist questions where the devil might be hiding, and then takes a nighttime swim.

Between basement and stoop, PBRs and politics, two bros discuss rock music history, protest, incarcerated relatives, fine cheese, the book plot of Bridge to Terabithia, and lesbian girlfriends.

“[Segalove] pursues her self-analysis via the popular culture and TV addiction of her youth: seeing JFK shot on TV, falling in love with the TV repairman, being glued to the tube while suffering from the requisite bout of mononucleosis, and associating the memory of watching her parents kiss with the soundtrack of Dragnet.” —Marita Sturken, “Revising Romance: New Feminist Video,” Art Journal 45 (Fall 1985)

The ground is frozen and the whiteness hides the carcass of a thing that once was happy... but now maybe had gotten gassed by things undigested. The bones of once-mighty and blubbery beings stand erect among midgets or dangle around the necks of dormant cannibals destined for a likewise extinction and yet, there is hope. As long as there is still a little meat on those bones our appetite for living goes on.

Storms batter California as 1995 ushers in a world of computerized characters and unplugged souls in search of electrified juice. The images of a naked past haunt the denizens of today as a wet tomorrow threatens to sweep them into oblivion on a tide of technology. Already water-bogged and bloated, the occupants seek the sun and the worshippers who strip in defiance of Divine dehydration.

A day in the life of a professional photographer (Wegman) and his eager student (Smith), this tape offers a humorous, at times surreal, how-to instructional course in photography. Filled with practical advice, the tape sardonically centers itself more on the need to cultivate an effective artistic persona than actually taking any photographs. Wegman asks: "Before you carve out your own niche, it’s important to ask yourself one tough question: do you have the aptitude?"

A day in the life of a professional photographer (Wegman) and his eager student (Smith), this tape offers a humorous, at times surreal, how-to instructional course in photography. Filled with practical advice, the tape sardonically centers itself more on the need to cultivate an effective artistic persona than actually taking any photographs. Wegman asks: "Before you carve out your own niche, it’s important to ask yourself one tough question: do you have the aptitude?"

"The gerbil has long been associated with New World capitalism because of its incessant energy. The Golden Age of Hollywood takes on the history and evolution of this delightful household pet."

— International Film Festival Rotterdam (2003)

— "Jim Finn's Wüstenspringmaus, a well-sprung, rear-screened account of a gerbil's life in the '70s."

— Guy Maddin, Film Comment, January (2004)

This title is also available on Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 1.

A California winter turns the left coast into a brew of foaming festivities while landlubbers leap for joy in the spray of salty slurpings.

This East Coast travelogue documents my journey from New York City to Boston as several screenings plunge me into a maelstrom of social excess and tummy filling delights.  You too can digest this banquet of artists, poets and movie-makers as this foray into fleeting fame runs its course on a highway of film oriented locales.  See the Harvard Film Archive in all its spaciousness and visit the citadel of cinema, Anthology Film Archives, before winding up in a Greenwich Village bar full of verbal beauty.  A trip for young and old who like to sit in one spot and watch someone els