A thirty-three minute video odyssey documenting one woman's search for the miracle of the Virgin Mary. A must-see for recovering Catholics and their families and friends worldwide. From Italy to Portugal, from France to Georgia, from Iowa City to Peru, Miracle recovers a newly-minted set of the Seven Deadly Sins on the way to immortalizing the latest modern religious trend: "Spiritual Tourism." Rated S for satirical.
The filmmaker accepts the challenge of the philosopher and changes not only a table but also chairs, shoes, jugs, teapots and almost everything else lying around his house.
"What prevents me from supposing that this table either vanishes or alters its shape when no one is observing it and then when someone looks at it again changes back? But one feels like saying – who is going to suppose such a thing?"
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969)
Introduces the audience to the rockin' talkin' pony, who provides musical accompaniment for a series of Texas country-dance lessons.
This title is also available on Ben Coonley: Trick Pony Trilogy.
A chance to view the upper Bronx as a mantle of whiteness cloaks its natural splendor like icing on a cake and things all blubbery bob to the surface for air and a sniff of the "good life."
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.
Accidental Confessions combines scenes from a demolition derby with statements taken from automobiles insurance claims. In these claims, drivers were instructed to summarize the details of their accidents in the fewest words possible, resulting in absurd and contradictory statements.
A mother sews; a son yearns for meat; a friend relives the past via glamour shots of a forgotten slab of cheesecake that ferments off-camera. A slice of life with the bowl of cherries missing. A brief visit to a corner of the world that locks itself away with crunchy carbohydrates and six-inch protein protuberances.
In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.
“A spoof on current art attitudes [that] stretches the definition of what can be considered art. Because the late 1960s and early 1970s were periods of innovation, using the human body as art, making process equivalent to product... [etc.], Baldessari questions that very sense of originality and exploration by taking it to its (rather mundane) limits. By taping a stick at one end, then picking it up at the other, he is both questioning and spoofing what constitutes art.” —Marcia Tucker, “John Baldessari: Pursuing the Unpredictable,” John Baldessari (New York: New Museum, 1981)
Legendary filmmaker George Kuchar, in between trips to the bathroom, visits three Bay area friends: an eccentric filmmaking couple who produce zombie movies, and performer Billy Nayer.
A big splashy rendering of Hollywood in hot action. The babes, the boobs, the boo-boos and the inner triumphs all brought to the screen by the uncorked youth and uncouth old bats of the San Francisco Art Institute.
This wonderful and wide-ranging saga of New Age sensibilities in conflict with down-and-dirty urges takes the viewer on a roller coaster ride into the freak show world of actors and actresses in need of adequate direction. The cast is flamboyant and floundering in this tale of sickness and motherly love competing for the souls of the sexually ambiguous as they mature into mammals of desire and despair. Witness the majesty of digital wizardry as it attempts to zest up the zombie zeitgeist inherent in these fast-paced productions of desperate means.
A behind-the-scenes look at the man behind the trophy and the poisons that taint an otherwise jubilant jamboree.
This title is also available on The World of George Kuchar.
“It’s spring, it’s spring, and I feel I’m giving birth myself, to something monstrous, something ugly.” Gibbons enters the woods to begin his destructive campaign against spring, snapping the buds off trees while babbling maniacally. Sabotaging Spring is an impressionistic peek at Gibbons’s paranoid fancy; he explains the facts of life, evolution, and whistling to his dog Woody.
This title is also available on Joe Gibbons Videoworks: Volume 1.
Less than two minutes long, this short tape makes playful and surreal use of video’s editing capabilities. Set to a sped-up version of The Band’s “The Weight” – complete with the falsetto vocals, and accelerated tempo that come with time manipulation on records – is a series of rapid, alternating washes and split-image cuts overlaying and juxtaposing the faces of the freex upon one another. Male faces and female faces fuse, the exact identity of the individuals becoming dissolving into ambiguity.
Distracted Blueberry follows a performance art band through a series of poetic encounters. Masculine tropes are undone to form a relationship between male sexuality and the human death drive. The body, violence and humour are positioned in the larger context of nothingness and somethingness, bridging a tension between externalized anxieties and the terrors of nature. Evocative of inner emotional states, strange landscapes exist as reflections of our shared dreams and nightmares.
Viewer discretion advised
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.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — drones — have become an everyday feature of contemporary military activity, replacing humans in reconnaissance flights, small-scale combat missions and covert operations. The U.S. Army operates some ten thousands UAVs — a six-fold increase during Obama's term — deploying them over locations like Pakistan and Yemen.
The tenth episode in the ongoing Badger series. Themes? Living in the culture of the copy; originality and ownership; inexplicable illness; life on other planets. And wonder, times seven.
Prizewinner at FLEX festival.
Defiantly humorous in its tone, Delirium reflects Faber’s mother’s personal experience with what has been classified as “female hysteria.” While never reducing her mother’s condition to a single explanation, Delirium firmly and convincingly links her illness to the historically embattled position women hold in a patriarchal culture. The video layers haunting imagery and humorous iconoclasm, referencing everything from television episodes of I Love Lucy to Charcot’s 19th Century photos of female hysterics.
In a motel in El Reno, Oklahoma, George observes the weather and copes with leaking air conditioning, food shopping, loneliness, television, and eating, among other things.
Laurel Klick and I were members of the feminist art program at CalArts and became close lifelong friends. Laurel is behind the camera as I recount my one-sided flirtation with a guy who worked at CalArts in the equipment “cage” - the cage where I checked out the video Portapak - the Portapak we utilized to record my anecdote. My story about an everyday interaction would become a trademark of my work. “Laurel and Susan” was not edited or presented publicly until 2022.
Colorful lines follow the gestures of a conductor leading the orchestra until he disappears just at the point of crescendo. As the music slows, he starts to reappear. A sketch as a tribute to Walt Disney.
This title is also available on Ximena Cuevas: El Mundo del Silencio (The Silent World) and Half-Lies: The Videoworks of Ximena Cuevas.
Lesser Apes tells the story of a love affair between a primatologist, Farrah, and a female bonobo ape, Meema. Bonobos are the species with which humans share the most DNA, but unlike our species, they are matriarchal, live without conflict, and are unabashedly sexual. A paean to perversion, the film combines animation, live action and song to challenge attitudes about sex, language and our relationship to nature.
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. - George Kuchar
