Filmforum Offers Kuchar’s Sweet, Jaunty Eccentricity

This weekend, Filmforum will present “Holy Unwholesome Humor,” two in-person evenings of work by underground filmmaking legend George Kuchar.

Program 1, “Films From the Kuchar Closet,” composed of early and recent efforts in 16-millimeter, will screen Saturday at 8 p.m. at Beyond Baroque.

Program 2, “Nothing but His Latest Videos,” will screen Sunday at 2 p.m. at MOCA. Along with his twin brother, Mike, George Kuchar became a key figure in alternative filmmaking in the ‘60s and has remained so to this day, although currently he’s working in video. Kuchar’s earliest films were mainly lusty, good-humored spoofs of Hollywood melodramas. There’s always been a sweet, jaunty eccentricity in Kuchar, both in front of and behind the camera.

Love of family, pets and nature are strong elements in the artist and in the man. Now in his 50s, he teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work, which can seem off-the-cuff, is marked by a tender lyricism, an affection for kitsch, a love of eating--and a love of thundering canned scores on the soundtrack, many of them borrowed from vintage movies.

“Corruption of the Damned” (1965) is a rambling, funny tale about youthful sexual longing in a New Jersey community. It features a Monroe wanna-be, more Diane Arbus than Marilyn, and sends-up “bad girl” exploitation pictures that were already becoming a leftover from the ‘50s. “I’m no good, Murray,” says our heroine. “I’m cheap trash.”

“The Mongreloid” (1978) is a fond expression of love for a big, old pet dog, for nature and for memories of life on the East Coast.

“Ascension of the Demonoids” (1986) is considerably more than a sendup of extra-cheap ‘50s UFO flicks as Kuchar asks us to ponder whether visitors from outer space “come from the stars or from the pits of our own private hell.” Throughout his career, Kuchar has been intrigued with the connection between the fantasies conjured up by horror pictures and other low-budget genre fare and seemingly mundane everyday life.

This observation applies in particular to the first of his five diary-like videos in their Los Angeles premieres. “Graffiti Junction” (1993), apparently set in Kuchar’s own San Francisco apartment, focuses on a gathering with friends, highlighted by a long discussion about prophecies and various theories about UFOs.

The hilarious, outrageous “Award” (1992) at once expresses Kuchar’s sincere gratitude for having received the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award for independent filmmaking last year and his dismay at the social function surrounding its presentation. The presence of actress Viveca Lindfors at the event inspires Kuchar to intercut scenes from “Cauldron of Blood” (1967), a lurid made-in-Spain horror picture in which an evil Lindfors exploits her blind elderly sculptor husband Boris Karloff.

“Migration of the Blubberoids” (1989) seems the most elusive and least of the offerings--it centers around the guilty pleasures of eating mom’s meals--but “The Creeping Crimson” (1987) has in contrast a touching specificity. The “creeping crimson” refers to Eastern autumn foliage, a portent of mortality, as Kuchar joins his bearded brother Mike at the hospital bedside of their mother, Stella, facing unspecified but ultimately successful surgery.

One of the most beautiful and enigmatic of all of Kuchar’s work, “Weather Watch” takes TV images of a tornado and imagines them as views out of the window of a nondescript Oklahoma motel, intercutting them with gorgeous sky vistas. “Weather Watch” seems to be expressing a love, and perhaps communion, with nature but also the kind of isolation one experiences in looking at an Edward Hopper painting.

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On Monday at 8 p.m., at the Museum of Flying, 2772 Donald Douglas Loop North at the Santa Monica Airport, Filmforum will also present its spring 1993 “First Sight Scene” program of new work by four Southern California artists selected by video maker O. Funmilayo Makarah. On the whole it’s a weak offering, but William Chartoff’s “Colored Balloons,” by far the strongest of the four, effectively tells of one night in the life of three young junkies.

Information: (213) 663-9568.