A Passage to Wetness

The Creeping Crimson

A short film by George Kuchar.

Gastronomic Getaway

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."

Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore

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

Screamplay

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?

Club Vatican

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 Reason to Live

"This film is about depression, although it's not that depressing. I suppose it has a message of faith and hope in it ... it does for me .... But then again my interest may not match yours. It was shot in San Francisco and in Central Oklahoma with a cast of one man and four women. Crushing emotions are indulged in against a massive meteorological background that brings inspiration and terror to the characters involved."

Sparkle's Tavern

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.

Confessions

"Just as outrageous is Curt McDowell's CONFESSIONS. McDowell, a graduate student at San Francisco Art Institute, opens his film with a confession to his mother and father, listing in exhausting detail his sins of the flesh."

Taboo: The Single and the LP

"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

Every Dog Has Its Day

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.

Bongwater

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

Hold Me While I'm Naked

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.

Ascension of the Demonoids

George Kuchar received his only funding grant for this film ($20,000 from the NEA), and so, freed from the usual financial restraints, he was determined to have a good time and make a “spectacle” with “tons of color” and dazzling superimpositions. A big, colorful tapestry about rumors that are in all of the previous UFO movies. A loose story line that weaves in and out of the UFO phenomenon.

Wieners and Buns Musical

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

Nudes: A Sketchbook

"Curt McDowell's NUDES (A Sketchbook) is a paean to the filmmaker's closest friends: a series of portraits (beginning with one of George Kuchar) based on stylized, often graphically sexual interpretations of his or her personality. The portraits also, at times, represent Curt's own sexual interests as he projects them onto the lives of others. My favorites are 'Barbara', a Pre-Raphaelite vision of woman and 'Ainslie', a musical spoof on glamour. The filmmaker's point of view ranges from compulsively erotic to light-hearted and self-debunking. A broad reading of the term 'romantic' would probably best describe the spectrum of extreme, even outrageous, possibilities which Curt embraces in this sketchbook/film." - Karen Cooper, Film Forum

Maggots and Men

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.