Mike Kuchar Screening
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dec
18
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 6:30PM
The Wattis Institute | The Wattis Institute, 360 Kansas St., San Francisco, CA, 94103 View map
Part of event series: Dodie Bellamy Institute
Organized by
The Wattis Institute
Event description
Two people who really get to me are Dodie Bellamy and Mike Kuchar.They bare their souls and give me the courage to bare mine.
Mike Kuchar is an ever-changing novelty act inspired by, sex, love,the human form, nature,Hollywood, and animals. His novelty is his inventiveness, his act is art making. Was he the first filmmaker to cut away from a shot of two lovers kissing to a dog pooping?Probably. It’s nice to think of him out on the streets of greater New York with his 16mm camera, directing his actors (his brother George in head-to-toe leather and their shared-star,Floraine, dressed in a tight cleavage-revealing number) to lick their lips and kiss while waiting for their dog Bocco to do his business.The quaintness of the scene behind the scene melts my heart. 50 years later, Mike’s passion for love,lovers, and the lost is as strong as ever.
In “Street Meat” (2018) one of his soul searching videos, his young actors, adonis types, are his stand ins, and let’s face it, he’s showing the people what they want to see. He tops his cinematic confections with words, poetry by any standard, the mise en scène filled out by carefully placed props in beautifully composed shots. A true cinematographer, a skilled storyteller, a searching monologist, his lamps and shades are not just props, they light the scene, usually his apartment,something the casual viewer won’t notice. Mike loves it casual. He loves it deep. Watch a few of these gems and you’ll become familiar with the same walls, the same flower pots, and the same feelings, all done differently.
–Anne McGuire
This program includes rare films by Mike Kuchar such as Fur of the Field(1975) and Chronicles (1969), as well as Street Meat (2018), and other more recent works.
This event is organized and hosted by the artist Anne McGuire.
Mike Kuchar is an ever-changing novelty act inspired by, sex, love,the human form, nature,Hollywood, and animals. His novelty is his inventiveness, his act is art making. Was he the first filmmaker to cut away from a shot of two lovers kissing to a dog pooping?Probably. It’s nice to think of him out on the streets of greater New York with his 16mm camera, directing his actors (his brother George in head-to-toe leather and their shared-star,Floraine, dressed in a tight cleavage-revealing number) to lick their lips and kiss while waiting for their dog Bocco to do his business.The quaintness of the scene behind the scene melts my heart. 50 years later, Mike’s passion for love,lovers, and the lost is as strong as ever.
In “Street Meat” (2018) one of his soul searching videos, his young actors, adonis types, are his stand ins, and let’s face it, he’s showing the people what they want to see. He tops his cinematic confections with words, poetry by any standard, the mise en scène filled out by carefully placed props in beautifully composed shots. A true cinematographer, a skilled storyteller, a searching monologist, his lamps and shades are not just props, they light the scene, usually his apartment,something the casual viewer won’t notice. Mike loves it casual. He loves it deep. Watch a few of these gems and you’ll become familiar with the same walls, the same flower pots, and the same feelings, all done differently.
–Anne McGuire
This program includes rare films by Mike Kuchar such as Fur of the Field(1975) and Chronicles (1969), as well as Street Meat (2018), and other more recent works.
This event is organized and hosted by the artist Anne McGuire.
This is the fifth event in our year-long season dedicated to the questions posed by the work of Dodie Bellamy and how they address art, culture,and society today.
Entry details
We Bare Our Souls: films and videos by Mike Kuchar, selected by Anne McGuire.
6:30 pm
Free and open to the public.