The New York City summer is fueled by the sultry emanations of hot air that tumble off the tongues of potential thespians as they attempt to decipher the gastric guesswork embedded in the prose of the pre-production process. The video camera flits across the boroughs of NYC in a splash-dash sojourn of sumptuous banquets and bohemian bombast, while the down-to-earth wisdom of the seeing impaired helps to guide the protagonist into detours of wisdom befitting his putrid project. A theatrical play incubates in the balding head of the videomaker and as its presence makes itself felt among the various victims of his vision, we share with them the horror of advancing age and the descriptive diatribes toward the destiny of the decrepit damned.

This science fiction adventure centers on the interaction between a crew of Earthmen and their seduction by the love-hungry Amazons of the red planet, Mars. The tale is brought to life with all the opulence that an $800 budget can produce and the young cast of non-actors live up to their fullest foibles as the plot thickens with a mix of romance and wartime action intertwined with a musical number or two. The ambitions were high and the necklines low in this effects-laden tribute to pulp fiction fantasy and intergalactic intercourse.

Holed up in a Oklahoma motel room, George Kuchar witnesses the tornado-conjuring power of a talking ceramic figurine.

This three-part mini-series explores the mysterious and the mundane in a splash of digital dioramas that wipe across the screen in a cascade of electronic barfs. Zeroing in on the paranormal theories of UFO author John A. Keel, this leisurely exposition, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, sweeps the viewer into a candy-colored world of scintillating mysteries made all the more intriguing by culinary digressions.

George spends quality time with his friends Karen and Carla in this unconventional, glitchy, collaged holiday video. HOLIDAZE filters a gift exchange through a lightly ironic, kitschy palette: whizzing geometric irises, stock footage of angelic-looking kids opening presents, and MIDI versions of Christmas songs. Kuchar’s magic was his ability to see the cinematic potential in everything around him—here, he finds endearing humor in three friends trying to work a landline phone. It became a tradition for Kuchar to break out the camera during his friends’ holiday festivities, but HOLIDAZE is unique for its visual verve, with lo-fi effects reminiscent of an arcade game.

Writes Kuchar, "The magnificent Mono Lake becomes the centerpiece for this car trip through Yosemite National Park and the splendors of roadside pastry. Majestic mineral deposits rise from the salt laden waters as the bloated and bulimic revel in nature's nutrients."

Kuchar’s childhood was heavily shaped by Catholic sexual repression and guilt. Movies acted as an escape from day-to-day life, a parallel reality that reveled in sin and sensation. Teaching at the libertine San Francisco Art Institute from 1971–2011, Kuchar made numerous hot-blooded, Z-grade “classroom pictures” with his students. Several, including Club Vatican, Motel Capri and Evangelust, act as lascivious collective exorcisms of religious hypocrisy and sexual repression. Club Vatican is one of the most visually sumptuous of Kuchar’s classroom pictures, and was recently restored by the Harvard Film Archive (alongside other of Kuchar’s pedagogical free-for-alls). The frame is packed with visual stimulation and the film unfolds as a series of writhing tableaux depicting clergy and sinners alike in perverse Catholic rites. Kuchar called it “a meditation on religious upheaval via mental strife.” Starring Courtney Love!

A man cleanses himself after being unfaithful to his wife.

“It glows with the embers of desire! It smokes with the revelation of men and women longing for robust temptations that will make them sizzle into maturity with a furnace-blast of unrestrained animalism. A film for young and old to enjoy.” —George Kuchar

In his 1988 film Summer of No Return, George had to make the beautiful lead actress disappear, So, thanks to her, the plot advanced considerably.

"In the late spring of each year the Great Plains states of the U.S. experience a season characterised by destructive tornadoes of awesome force. This is the time of year when the underground film- and video-maker George Kuchar leaves his San Francisco home to make his annual pilgrimage to the nidus of these frightening storms. As hail and twisters batter the heartland, Kuchar holes up with his video camera in an inexpensive motel room somewhere in the vast prairies of Oklahoma and waits." - Jesse Lerner, Storm Squatting at El Reno (at cabinetmagazine.org)

A man, his dog, and the regions they inhabited, each leaving his own distinctive mark on the landscape. Not even time can wash away the residue of what they left behind.

Featuring Donna Kerness, Bob Cowan, Mike Kuchar, Cynthia Mailman, George Kuchar & Larry Leibowitz. Preserved by Anthology through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by the Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. “LUST FOR ECSTASY is my most ambitious attempt since my last film…. I wrote many of the pungent scenes on the D train, and when I arrived on the set I ripped them up and let my emotional whims make chopped meat out of the performances and the story…. Yes, LUST FOR ECSTASY is my subconscious, my own naked lusts that sweep across the screen in 8mm and color with full fidelity sound.” – George Kuchar

Presented as loosely autobiographical, Hold Me While I’m Naked centres on the tribulations of an independent filmmaker, frustrated at every turn as he tries to make a film that pretends to artistic merit.

An actress and a director run through a melodramatic scene, speaking to a mannequin.