The Thief and the Stripper is a sordid tale of matrimonial murder by Mike and George Kuchar.
George Kuchar (born August 31, 1942, New York City) is an American film director, known for his “low-fi” aesthetic, playful use of no-talent actors, plotless plots, and themeless themes. Trained as a commercial artist in a vocational high school, the School of Industrial Art, he drew weather maps for a local news show. During this period, he and his twin brother Mike Kuchar were making 8mm movies which were showcased in the then-burgeoning underground film scene alongside films by Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage.
After being laid off from a commercial art job in New York City, Kuchar was offered a teaching job in the film department of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he has taught since 1971. It was in San Francisco that he became involved with underground comics via his neighbors Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith. They both wound up in his movies and George wound up in their publications.
Planet Kuchar, a biopic of the life of George Kuchar… read more
Mike Kuchar (born August 31, 1942, New York City) defined the low-budget, high-camp/pop aesthetic for subsequent auteurs such as Andy Warhol, John Waters, and David Lynch. Raised in the Bronx, he made his first films as a teenager in the 1950s with his twin brother George Kuchar and participated in New York’s underground film scene in the 1960s. In addition to making his own films, Mike has collaborated with a number of important artists including Rosa von Praunheim, Marc Arthur and Kembra Pfahler. Mike divided his time between New York City and his brother’s San Francisco apartment until 2007 when he moved to San Francisco permanently.
His most famous film is the campy 1965 sci-fi classic Sins of the Fleshapoids, available on DVD from Other Cinema.
It Came From Kuchar, a documentary film of the life of George and Mike Kuchar by Jennifer Kroot, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival on 14 March 2009.
The Kuchar brothers collaborated… read more
