Donna Kerness

Lust for Ecstasy

George Kuchar

Dick Chambermaid, Galib Cohn

“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

The Mammal Palace

George Kuchar

Suzette Harris, Zelda Keiser

The movie takes a rather negative look at things despite the fact that it was shot in reversal film. It depicts the turbulent relationships of disturbed individuals existing on various levels of an apartment house. Donna Kerness and her husband Hopeton Morris are lurid together and they are also pretty lurid when they're alone.

Unstrap Me

George Kuchar

Walter Gutman, Janine Söderhjelm

Exhausted by a sexually frustrating home life in the Bronx, portly, 65-year-old Uncle Bojo tosses aside all responsibilities, leaves his wife, Stella, and sets out in search of adventures.

Secrets of the Shadow World

George Kuchar

George Kuchar, Donna Kerness

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.

It Came from Kuchar

Jennifer M. Kroot

George Kuchar, Mike Kuchar

It Came from Kuchar is the definitive, feature documentary about the legendary, underground filmmaking twins, the Kuchar brothers. George and Mike Kuchar have inspired two generations of filmmakers, actors, musicians, and artists with their zany, "no budget" films and with their uniquely enchanting spirits.

Encyclopedia of the Blessed

George Kuchar

Bocko, Floraine Connors

" ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BLESSED culminates my involvement with artist Red Grooms and Mimi Gross. It is a diary of our work as we head for the Pacific Ocean in a suicidal plunge for theatrical infamy. The film traces the construction of two craven images made in the likeness of myself by Grooms and Gross. Then it switches to the sandhills of Nebraska where fat cattle walk around. There the film explores Grooms' biggest construction, "The Chicago Installation." The film rolls relentlessly onward to the West Coast showing, for the first time on any screen, a theatrical production we three put in the University of California. It marks my directorial debut on the stage and Red Grooms' comeback after ten years of exile from live theatre." - George Kuchar

Born of the Wind

Mike Kuchar

Bob Cowan, Donna Kerness

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

Color Me Shameless

George Kuchar

Mike Abrams, Bocko

The Craven Sluck

Mike Kuchar

Floraine Connors, George Kuchar

A desperate, married woman meets a mysterious man who she blatantly desires. Through some twists and turns, things do not go over as well as she seems to wish.

The Secret of Wendel Samson

Mike Kuchar

Red Grooms, Mimi Gross

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.

Pagan Rhapsody

George Kuchar

Brad Bell, John Collyer

Edgar, an aristocrat, commissions Camillo to write a play based on an affair he had ten years ago with the Countess del Monaco. But Edgar first has to find a suitable actress to play the Countess – his search will lead to his own death.

Corruption of the Damned

George Kuchar

Mike Kuchar, Floraine Connors

Corruption of the Damned might seethe with violence and sex, the two most attractive things you can put on the screen, but beneath them a twisted outlook pervades.

The Devil's Cleavage

George Kuchar

Curt McDowell, Virginia Giritlian

"One of Kuchar’s few feature-length works is this ribald pastiche to postwar Hollywood melodrama, that period when the studios were trying very hard to be adult. The intricate, overheated plot involves a nurse trapped in an unhappy marriage who escapes the big city in search of greener pastures in Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma. Swerving from earnest homage to dark satire, Kuchar simultaneously imitates and savages the legacy of Sirk, Preminger and Minnelli that inspired him, gleefully intertwining the suggestive and the scatological, while also pointing towards the later postmodern parodies of Cindy Sherman. The Devil’s Cleavage is also a rich time capsule of 1970s San Francisco, replete with cameos from Curt McDowell and Art Spiegelman." —hcl.harvard.edu

No President

Jack Smith

Mario Montez, Piero Heliczer

Smith's third feature film was originally titled "The Kidnapping of Wendell Willkie by the Love Bandit," in reaction to the 1968 Presidential Campaign. It mixes B&W footage of Smith's creatures with old campaign footage of Willkie, a liberal Republican who ran against FDR in the 1940's. The climax of the work appears to be the "auctioning" of the presidential candidate at a convention.

Night of the Bomb

George Kuchar, Mike Kuchar

Terry Brunetti, Bob Cowan

The film combines teenage lust and deranged delinquency to create a cautionary tale for the ages.

Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof

George Kuchar, Mike Kuchar

Terry Brunetti, Bob Cowan

“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