Symphony for a Sinner

A wide-ranging look at pictures I collect on my walls and in my head. A look at pictures I concoct with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, and objects d’art collected by those whose picture is taken by my picture-taking machine.

A high schooler from suburbia gets in touch with her sexuality while working at a dingy movie theater in the city.

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 talented writer, Edgar Allen, arrives in Hollywood with big dreams but is quickly pulled into a world of madness and depravity. A detective investigating a series of murders discovers that they are similar to the murders that occur in the new script by Edgar. Who will survive and what parts will be left for them?

Siblings hide their ownership of a bordello from their mother. When she is visited by a man who shares the joys of sexual enlightenment with her, her entire world is turned upside down.

Mary was a good girl until she decides to kill all the "sexist pigs". She of course encounters many of which, and enjoys killing them.

A shady motel manager becomes obsessed with a neglected wife.

A tender and realistic story of a scientist who falls in love with a mummy he has restored to life.

"Abner L. Fuqua clears his throat and I get mad and stand close to trains or cut my eyebrow off. Dorothy is Abner's wife. Abner can slap hard, like blue magic." - graffiti

After getting fired from his teaching job and dumped by his girlfriend, Jack, a painter, embarks on a soul searching road trip with his dog, Scout. However, bad weather and bumps in the road quickly cause more problems than he can handle. An impulsive decision to take from a bag full of unknown pills leads him on a drug-fueled journey with no destination in sight, and he soon finds himself making both friends and foes along the way.

A young man's struggle with his sexuality overtakes his life, driving him deep into his subconscious where guilt and fears of physicality chase him still further. Cornered by an intangible terror, he realises he must either break out or break down.

David is an artist and a pothead. He's fallen in love with the beautiful and sexy Serena, and things are going simply splendidly until poor David's house burns down. Serena doesn't need the bad vibes, so she splits the scene and runs off to New York with rocker and junkie Tommy. Lonely David finally turns to the sweet, sweet comfort of marijuana and his strange menagerie of friends to forget about his lost home and love

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.

A musical about an unhappy couple and the man that stands between them. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

An hour-long saga of Mick Terrific, rock 'n' roll star, and the cast of 50 he encounters on his search for "Mr. Wonderful." “PEED INTO THE WIND smears across the screen like one of those dirty underground comic books. It’s loaded with a lot of big scenes and unusual looking people that make this epic resemble a clogged toilet. Unfortunately, since several of the performers were not as loyal as Ainslie Pryor and John Thomas, the plot is difficult to follow but in no way hinders the sewer-like sequences. It’s quite enjoyable and possesses the releasing power of an enema.” –George Kuchar. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.

A utopian re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921, featuring film history's first cast of over 100 transgender actors, paints a portrait of formerly pro-Soviet sailors at the Kronstadt naval garrison who rebelled against the perceived failures of the new Bolshevik state.