One of the earliest cinema underground absurdists were the Kuchar brothers. Low budget and truly underground, they pumped out film after film using friends, non actors and plots, or non plots, that played off of and seemed to mock both mainstream Hollywood and the B-movie industry.

Unlike some of their more educated fellows, their careers began in 1954 when they tore the wrapping paper off an 8-mm camera on their 12th birthday. They quickly taught themselves to use it and set about shooting brilliant, exotic, absurd features starring their friends, inspired by the Hollywood blockbusters and B movies they obsessed over at their local theaters in the Bronx.

Read the rest at Vice Magazine: GEORGE & MIKE KUCHAR – Vice Magazine

 

George Kuchar is one of the few filmmakers who get’s tagged with all the alternative cinema labels available: “experimental filmmaker” “underground” “avant garde” “absurdist”, etc.  His work covered it all and was a huge inspiration for opening up the floodgates of realization that cinema could be homegrown, backyard, uniquely creative and still respected. Many now well known filmmakers took this inspiration and used it to go forth and create their own work.

George Kuchar has directed over 200 films and videos (including over 15 with his twin brother Mike), many of them short films by students in his courses at San Francisco Art Institute. His work is archived at the Video Data Bank. In the Critics’ Poll of the 100 best films of the 20th century, appearing originally in the January 4, 2000 edition of The Village Voice, Hold Me While I’m Nakedwas ranked 52nd.