MARCH 26 » 7:45p
APRIL 1 » 7:30p
BOSTON PREMIERE with JENNIFER KROOT and GEORGE KUCHAR
2009, USA, 86 min.
Director: Jennifer M. Kroot (in attendance)
Cast: George Kuchar (in attendance), Mike Kuchar, John Waters, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin
It Came From Kuchar is a fun and inspiring look into the lives and art of two of America’s greatest underground auteurs, twin brothers George and Mike Kuchar. For decades, they’ve blurred the lines between trash cinema and art cinema, producing zany, colorful, debauched epics that have won equal respect from both the psychotronic freaks and the avant-garde community, while remaining ignored by the world-at-large.
The Kuchar brothers, both together and separately, have produced countless films, toying with the borrowed conventions of melodrama, horror, science fiction, and exploitation to create their own unique, genre-bending pastiches. While testing the limits of their low-budget aesthetic, they’ve simultaneously become masters of their chosen form, demonstrating a remarkable uency in the cinematic language that transcends their wildly trashy mise-en-scène. (Along the way, George also practically invented video blogging with his diary films.)
Containing plenty of great interviews with admirers of the brothers—including filmmakers John Waters, Atom Egoyan, and Guy Maddin, and critic/theorist B. Ruby Rich—this doc is a wonderful homage to the massively inuential duo. It’s an entertaining, funny, and surprisingly touching look into the world of the Kuchar brothers. Director Jennifer Kroot packs the film with wonderful anecdotes about their lives, their inspirations, and the indeliable mark they’ve left on American cinema.
Note: This screening is co-presented by the Boston LGBT Film Festival.
— Bryan McKay
PLAYING WITH
The Hairy Horror
George Kuchar
10 min.
A chance encounter with a sober student reveals the mystery of a woodland wonder that has left a makr on his youthful psyche just as it leaves huge footprints on the forest floor. A short meditation on a tall terror in the trees that shade shadowy giants from the glare of sanity.