Humor

"Here is Everything presents itself as a message from The Future, as narrated by a cat and a rabbit, spirit guides who explain that they've decided to speak to us via a contemporary art video because they understand this to be our highest form of communication. Their cheeky introduction, however, belies the complex set of ideas that fill the remainder of the film. Death, God, and attaining and maintaining a state of Grace are among the thematic strokes winding their way through the piece, rapturously illustrated with animation, still and video imagery." 

The artist Bruce Conner is featured in this videotape which bounces east and west, depicting the fragility of holistic hooligans in a world of hit-and-run encounters, Prozac, and pizzas. A meditation on faulty plumbing and paradise lost... but not forgotten!

A trip across the bay to Concord yields a harvest of non-fruit-like beings who celebrate a housewarming that simmers with macho machinations and family discord. The mood is upbeat while the company is lowbrow, and coming out of the bushes rather than the woodwork.

"Weeks before the 2006 midterm elections in the U.S., Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez came to the United Nations and blew everyone's minds with his "smells of sulfur" speech about Bush. It was an emperor wears no clothes moment with perfect comic timing. Bush was officially a lame duck after that speech. No matter what nutty things Chávez ever did, our nation's children will always be grateful." 

– Jim Finn

Body Prep helps fortify and support the body during any level of activity—low, medium, or high intensity. It compares various alternatives to weightlifting with natural and artificial light sources. Exercise is explored through the change of seasons.

This title is also available on Animal Charm Videoworks: Volume 3, Computer Smarts.

Baby Bush meets Tubby-land. Completed in August 2001, this project was initially just a simple comic skewering of George W. Bush and his defense policies—but after September 11th, it took on a whole new meaning. State of the Union now has a surreal documentary quality that is genuinely disturbing.

At the San Francisco Art Institute, a studio awaits the onslaught of creative concoctions perpetrated by a bearded atrocity who now hovers over past malpractices that cast a Technicolor pall over the whitewashed walls. The viewer becomes privy to a cesspool of cinematic venues that rage in the underworld of nice homes in need of spiritual fumigation. See the agents of these misdemeanors commit their crimes of celluloid crassness under the supervision of vision-impaired deviltry that besets lax Christians in need of baptismal bathing.

From the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the innards of a castle of contraptions, this video explores the creative bric-a-brac of several entities who pioneered a wired frontier filled with fire wires and fire water.  Join them as they schmooze among the futuristic flotsam of fame and fortune cookies and rejoice in the eggplanted paradise that awaits the monsoonal mush of high desert drenchings.

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.

Ponies discover an equine Shangri-La. The audience is introduced to a classic dance step. Chubby Checker provides the musical accompaniment.

This title is also available on Ben Coonley: Post Pony Trilogy.

A reflection on the deep and the creatures that attempt to fathom its resources (such as baked salmon and rubbery crocodile meat). A visual journey into the far reaches of waterlogged consciousness, where the yearnings of the tummy meet the revulsion of the cranium—a cranium mostly made up of water in the first place, like a head of cabbage. Besides, the video is more of a head-trip to the nether reaches of Neptune's haunts where tourists glide through guts of glass to ooh and aah at the mysteries of the deep-end.

Now Let Us Praise American Leftists is an experimental video animation that seeks to eulogize and ridicule the American leftist movement of the past century. Foregrounding the exclusionary nature of American leftist politics, and its persistent refusal to allow more diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation to enter into the larger political daialogue, the video presents representations of American leftists as they are: men with mustaches.

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.

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

Craggy, ice-encrusted peaks soar skyward as blue lagoons lap incessantly to the drumbeats of big city behemoths hellbent on halibut and hashbrowns! The magic and grandeur of glacier-masked real estate is here for all to see and digest in this bountiful serving of natural delights.

Male escorts and crytozoologists battle behemoths and bulemics in this student-teacher collaboration about undying evil and those that escape it via the LOVE CANAL.

A trip to Winnipeg introduces the viewer to moments of Canadian cuisine and to the easily digestible tidbits that make up the WNDX Film/Video Festival. Come join the movie buffs as they beef up on eye candy and tummy truffles, all the while indulging in a masticating miasma of minutia that's easy to swallow. Wash it all down with some river views and Mr. Coffee secretions and you'll get a taste of the treats that await all who head north to appease the more southerly rumblings of the human anatomy.

On April 6th, 1974, this episode of the Videofreex’s production of Lanesville TV aired, including four segments: a choreographed piece by the Elaine Summers Dancers, a Vietnam tape titled “Where do you get your money?,” several phone conversations with local audience members, and a comical interview with a fictional fish, Sam Trouta.

In Final Exit, an aged one is confronted with his options in blunt terms. Does he want to drag out his existence, increasingly infirm and a burden to his caretakers, or go quietly before resentment overwhelms sentiment? Does he wish to go on living, the quality of his life increasingly diminishing, or be euthanized? Would he prefer cremation or burial? This video confronts the issues of mortality and advancing decrepitude that faces even the friskiest.

A sort-of music video that focuses on and under young women and men engaged in focusing video and movie cameras on other young men and women.

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

Does she ever! A tiny gem that utilises paper animation and a snippet of sound to humorous, kitschy effect.

"You are invited to Jim’s party! Snake optional."

--Cinematexas Festival (Austin, 2001)

"Three more sing-alongs, this time with swans, a snake, and the Red Army Chorus."

--L.A. Freewaves Festival

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

Alienation in academia beneath the chandeliered opulence of a political correctional facility that caters to clashing cultures with chicken fajitas and carefully worded alphabet soup. Features George at the Flaherty Seminar and the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Ned the dog eats, growls and passes gas as we, the viewers, pass the time with him and his keepers as they share the stolen hours with us all. It’s all here: the pizza, the memories, the good times and the bad.

A short atmospheric tour of a movie star’s mansion and a glimpse of the living things within the chambers: things that cook, feed the sharks, and gnaw on bones.

Bill Murray and Christopher Guest lead a behind-the-scenes tour of the 1976 showdown between the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers. This irreverent view of football and America's number one sports event examines the "Woodstock of corporate America" from the viewpoint of the players, the wives, the fans and the media. The big business of sports, the high stakes, the pressures, the cost in health and happiness are all covered in this kaleidoscopic view of another American ritual.