Long before YouTube, there were the outrageous, no-budget movies of underground, filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar. George and Mike grew up in the Bronx in the 1950’s. At the age of twelve, they became obsessed with Hollywood melodramas and began making their own homespun melodramas with their aunt’s 8mm camera. They used their friends and family as actors and their Bronx neighborhood as their set. Early Kuchar titles featured in this film include I Was A Teenage Rumpot and Born of the Wind.
In the early 1960’s, alongside Andy Warhol, the Kuchar brothers shaped the New York underground film scene. Known as the “8mm Mozarts”, their films were noticeably different than other underground films of the time. They were wildly funny, but also human and vulnerable.
Their films have inspired many filmmakers, including John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin and Wayne Wang (all are interviewed in this film). Despite having high profile fans, the Kuchars remain largely unknown because they are only ambitious to make movies, not to be famous.
It Came From Kuchar interweaves the brothers’ lives, their admirers, a history of underground film and a “greatest hits” of Kuchar clips into a mesmerizing stream of consciousness tale.
Affectionately directed by one of George’s former students, Jennifer M. Kroot, It Came From Kuchar will introduce you to the amazing Kuchar brothers – two brothers who love to make movies and continue to inspire others. —kucharfilm.com
A tribute introduction to Jennifer Kroot's definitive look at the Kuchar Brothers, It Came From Kuchar, by Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais at One+One Filmmakers Journal http://oneplusonejournal.co.uk/2012/08/31/eyeblaze-3-it-came-from-kuchar/
Amiably conventional film concerning two all-time heroes of unconventional filmmaking, ICFK doesn't transcend its formal limitations but does give clues as to how the Kuchars transcended theirs. The film's especially intimate portrait of George connects far-flung dots of his inspirations -- H'wood, Catholicism, underground comix, loneliness, weird parents -- & filters them through his own unavoidable inner sweetness.
FNC '11 Great documentary looking at the personalities and the work of the Kuchar brothers. They represent an underground cinema that sadly is no longer with us but has certainly inspired many a filmmaker and video artist. The films excerpted are just magical in a certain way that one just can't look away from. Lacks the depthness of a film like "Crumb" but certainly an amazing introduction to important work.
For over half a century, George Kuchar made “brilliant, exotic, absurd” films.
"Everyone Else, a sun-kissed German film about a young couple in love and in doubt, might not be perfect, but so much is right and true in
"The Iranian Shrek and the American Kiarostami do not represent, in their new homes, what they represent in the film worlds where they originated