{"id":614,"date":"2011-09-07T15:46:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T20:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/?p=614"},"modified":"2011-09-07T15:46:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T20:46:45","slug":"rest-in-peace-george-kuchar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/2011\/09\/07\/rest-in-peace-george-kuchar\/","title":{"rendered":"Rest in peace, George Kuchar"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are very sad to report filmmaker & friend George Kuchar has passed away.\u00a0 George and his twin brother Mike just celebrated their 69th birthday last week.<\/p>\n

George and Mike started making films in the Bronx when they were kids.\u00a0 Inspired by the melodrama of Hollywood, by the weather, aliens, interesting looking people, etc., the brothers created fantastical, hilarious, beautiful works on 8mm and later on 16mm.\u00a0 They became involved with the NYC avant garde scene in the 1960s.\u00a0 When small format video became a viable alternative to the more expensive 16mm, the brothers switched formats and didn’t look back.\u00a0 Both have continued to regularly produce personal pictures.<\/p>\n

George taught a film-making course at the San Francisco Art Institute<\/a><\/strong> from 1971 until this past semester, producing a\u00a0 film with his students for each course.\u00a0 These collaborations are fascinating time capsules, as well as terrific documents of how the imagination of an inspiring professor can really drive the creativity of a course.\u00a0 The HFA has many of these student films in its<\/a> collection, <\/a><\/strong>and recently acquired the video work associated with the class.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Asphalt Ribbon (student collaboration, 1977) opening credit sequence<\/p><\/div>\n

George Kuchar visited the Boston area several times over the years, and his generosity and affability are well known here.\u00a0 He was an extremely inspiring filmmaker, advising students and other interested parties that all that was needed to become a filmmaker was to get your mits on a camera, read the instruction manual, and make a picture.\u00a0 During his 2010 visit to the HFA, George shot some video that later wound up in his diary movie ZEALOTS OF THE ZINC ZONE<\/a>.\u00a0 We are honored to be documented by the great George Kuchar himself and hope to preserve his memory the way he has preserved ours.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

George in Boston's Chinatown, shooting material for ZEALOTS OF THE ZINC ZONE (George Kuchar, 2010)<\/p><\/div>\n

Anthology Film Archives<\/a><\/strong> has restored the Kuchars’ teenage 8mm offerings as well as some of the brothers’ later works.\u00a0 The Pacific Film Archive<\/a><\/strong> has preserved several of George’s titles, including the famed I, AN ACTRESS.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong> The Harvard Film Archive, which also houses some of George’s work, has been working to preserve some films he made with his students, some of which showed in a program here last year<\/a>,<\/strong> and all three institutions continue to collaborate on Kuchar preservation projects.<\/p>\n

The HFA was pleased to show some of George’s WEATHER DIARIES <\/a><\/strong>last month, including his last film, HOTSPELL, which documents his annual weather-chasing trip to Oklahoma this past May.\u00a0 George, who was too sick to make the trip to the East coast, offered to do an introduction and Q&A via Skype, which was a really moving experience.\u00a0 We recorded the event and hope to put it online soon.\u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/p>\n

The HFA recently acquired George’s video masters, which includes his student collaboration movies, The Weather Diaries, and other diary videos.\u00a0 We are honored to have expanded our collection of George’s work, which is available for rental to screening venues through such institutions as Canyon Cinema<\/a><\/strong> and Video Data Bank<\/a>.<\/strong>\u00a0 We hope to present more of George’s work at our cinematheque next summer, including new 16mm preservation prints of student films THE CARNAL BIPEDS (1973) and CLUB VATICAN (1984).<\/p>\n

George will be missed by friends, students, and archivists.\u00a0 Our heart goes out to Mike.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of information about the Kuchars on the web.\u00a0 In memory of George, read more about him and watch some of his pictures.\u00a0 He was a unique person whose like will not be seen again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Hold Me While I'm Naked (George Kuchar, 1966)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are very sad to report filmmaker & friend George Kuchar has passed away.\u00a0 George and his twin brother Mike just celebrated their 69th birthday last week. George and Mike started making films in the Bronx when they were kids.\u00a0 Inspired by the melodrama of Hollywood, by the weather, aliens, interesting looking people, etc., the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2038,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2038"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":664,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hfacollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}