Project Title: It Came From Kuchar
Recipient Organization: Legion of Graduate Students of the San Francisco Art Institute
Fiscal Sponsor: Anthology Film Archives
Lead Artist: Jennifer Kroot
Genre and Date Awarded: Media Arts, June 2006
Premiere: Fall 2008

FILM DESCRIPTION

Filmmaker Jennifer Kroot and the Legion of Graduate Students of the San Francisco Art Institute are creating a 90-minute documentary film synthesizing the work of pioneer underground filmmaker George Kuchar, featuring his current and past students, Hollywood filmmakers who influenced him in the 1950s, and numerous artists who have been affected by his work. Among George Kuchar’s many protégés, fans and former students are John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, Todd Haynes, Wayne Wang, Christopher Coppola, Sophia Coppola, Art Spiegelman, David Lynch, Bill Griffith, Phillip Kaufman, Courtney Love, and Robert Crumb. Many of these artists have been interviewed for It Came From Kuchar. George’s twin brother Mike Kuchar, also an underground filmmaker, plays a large part as a subject in this documentary.

George Kuchar’s career began in the 1950s when he and his twin brother Mike became obsessed with 8mm film. When the boys received an 8mm film camera for their 12th birthdays, they began to stage productions inspired by epics they saw in theaters. The brothers went on in the 1960s to be pioneers along with Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and Stan Brakhage in the New York underground film scene.

The brothers worked together on over a dozen films in the 1950s and 1960s, then worked separately, producing scores of their own films. George has been the more prolific of the two, generating hundreds of films with the involvement of his students—over 30 years of teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)—as well as hundreds of personal video diaries and films of his own.

It Came From Kuchar is the definitive documentary about George Kuchar. This film includes interviews with the artists that he has inspired, features archival, underground footage of his work and follows the insane and dynamic production process of one of George’s latest creations in his production class at SFAI.

Please visit http://www.kucharfilm.com to see a short trailer

PROJECT TEAM

Lead artist Jennifer Kroot is a former student of George Kuchar’s at the San Francisco Art Institute. In directing this documentary about her former professor and mentor, she seeks to capture the many facets of a complex character who often dwells in a dark, albeit brightly (and garishly) colored, strange world. Prior to this project, Jennifer Kroot wrote, directed, and produced Sirens of the 23rd Century, which has screened at film festivals and small art houses internationally. Jennifer’s short films include “The Snake Princess,” which screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and “The Dreams of Bad Children,” which screened in Amsterdam’s Rough and Ruined Film Festival. Also participating in the project team are editor Tom Bullock, Director of Photography Christopher Million, and Producer Holly Million. Evie Mpras is the LOGS representative for It Came From Kuchar.

RECIPIENT ORGANIZATION

Legion of Graduate Students of the San Francisco Art Institute

The Legion of Graduate Students (LOGS) is the independent governing body of graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), the oldest art school on the West Coast. SFAI first existed in 1871 as the San Francisco Art Association, which established the California School of Design in 1873. SFAI enjoys an illustrious list of alumni that includes such luminaries as Eadweard Muybridge, Ansel Adams, Jerry Garcia, Annie Leibovitz, Christopher Coppola, and Lance Acord. At SFAI, George Kuchar has literally changed the lives of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate film students, inspiring them, befriending them, and encouraging them to take a risk and make films. This project is a rare opportunity to unite the SFAI film community in a common creative effort. Kuchar’s film classes will be extensively covered in the filming, and his current class of students, including his graduate student teaching assistant, will be involved in weekly film sessions on camera, in interviews, and behind the scenes.

LEAD ARTIST

Jennifer Kroot

Jennifer Kroot is a filmmaker and San Francisco Bay Area native. She studied film at both San Francisco State University and The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI).

In 1995, Jennifer met underground film pioneer George Kuchar while she was studying at SFAI and the infamous legend became her mentor. She became a fan of underground film because of its humor, satire, vivid color, fantasy, and unapologetic use of kitsch. She realized through George’s dynamic teachings that it is possible to make an epic without a Hollywood budget. Jennifer grew confident that she could transfer George’s no-budget, underground film style to the fairytale and myth genre of films she wanted to make.

In 2003, Jennifer wrote, directed and produced her low-budget, fairytale, satire feature film Sirens of the 23rd Century. Sirens is a neoclassical, B-sci-fi, gender-bending epic with a creative production design. The film takes place in the 23rd Century after cosmetics and modeling have been outlawed by a fascist, government regime called The Men’s Plainness Advocacy (MPA). The MPA has tried to eradicate models with their “Model Work Camps,” but this gives to a rebel movement of Beauty Renegades, who create underground finishing schools and covert cosmetic laboratories. The Beauty Renegades are led by a glamorous and lustful blue-haired Amazon (Dianna), who suffers from a slew of personal insecurities stemming from issues of low self-esteem. Dianna’s inner resources are tested when she falls in love with a runaway princess who joins ranks with The Renegades after fleeing from an arranged marriage with an MPA leader. To make matters worse, Dianna’s personal confidante becomes threatened by the lovely princess and catty politics spirals out of control like a bad perm.

Among Sirens’ reviews, Film Threat gave the film a “great rating” with three and a half stars and called it “A highly enjoyable camp satire”; Killer Movie Reviews said, “There’s something about a film that takes no prisoners”; Curve Magazine described it as “A hilariously postmodern fairytale”; Entertainment Today, L.A. called it “Camp of the highest order…like a co-production between John Waters and Greg Araki”; and The San Francisco Weekly said, “Propelled by garish colors, zany music cues and shameless puns, this anti-fascist fable is as exuberant as it is timely.”

See the trailer at the official Sirens website: www.sirensofthe23rdcentury.com

Sirens of the 23rd Century continues to screen internationally and has been shown in the following venues:

• The San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
  
• The Sci-Fi London Film Festival
  
• Dances With Films, Los Angeles
  
• The New Orleans Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (Best Narrative Feature)
  
• The Santa Cruz Film Festival
  
• The Silverlake Film Festival, Los Angeles
  
• The Rhode Island International Film Festival
  
• The Boston Underground Film Festival
  
• The Barcelona Mostra Lambda Festival
  
• The Brussels Gay and Lesbian Film Fstival
  
• The International Fantasy Film Festival of Malaga, Spain
  
• The Women’s Film Festival of Valencia, Spain
  
• The Fearless Tales Film Festival of San Francisco (Audience Choice Award, Best Feature Film)
  
• The Lausanne Underground Film Festival of Switzerland
  
• Midnight at The Clay Theatre, San Francisco
  
• The International Festival of Cinema and Tehcnology
  
• Film Night in the Park, Marin County
  
• Filmklubb, Oslo, Norway
  
• Filmklubb, Bergen, Norway
  
• Filmklubb, Trondheim, Norway
  
• The North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
  
• Husets Biograph of Copenhagen, Denmark
  
• Festival Buenos Aires Sangre Rojo de Terror, Fantastico y Bizarro (Best Director Award)
  
• Anthology Film Archives
  

ADVISORY BOARD

• John Waters – Filmmaker
  
• Buck Henry – Actor, Writer, Director
  
• Christopher Coppola – Filmmaker
  
• Ray Telles – Filmmaker
  
• Jack Stevenson – writer, Film Curator
  
• Elliot Lavine – Distributor, Film Curator
  
• Tracey Bigelow – Public Relations Specialist
  
• Mauricio Ancalmo – Former Legion of Graduate Students President

OTHER SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS

Anthology Film Archives

Anthology Film Archives, which is contributing archival footage to the project and serving as its fiscal sponsor, began in 1969, when Jonas Mekas, the director of the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, a showcase for avant-garde films, dreamed of establishing a permanent home where the growing number of new independent and avant-garde films could be shown on a regular basis. Today, it is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video with a particular focus on American independent and avant-garde cinema and its precursors found in classic European, Soviet, and Japanese Film. Jonas Mekas promoted and wrote about the Kuchar brothers work as it was arriving on the New York scene and he will contribute first-hand accounts of the Kuchars’ early underground screenings. The Archives continue to enjoy a productive relationship with George Kuchar today, having recently restored some of his rare, early 8mm films.

Paradigm Productions

Paradigm Productions was created by filmmakers Rick Tejeda-Flores and Ray Telles in 1990 as a non profit corporation to develop, produce and distribute film and television on a wide range of historical, social and cultural issues. Ray Telles is an advisor in the making of It Came From Kuchar. Ray’s 25 year career in film and television includes the production of documentaries and news magazine segments. He has produced and directed for Public Television, Turning Point and Nightline-ABC. His independent productions include films for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Telles has produced and directed over 30 films including The Fight in the Fields, a feature documentary on Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker’s movement which was in the documentary competition at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and aired on PBS.

GRANTS in support of It Came From Kuchar have been received from the following organizations and foundations:

• The Creative Work Fund
  
• The San Francisco Arts Commission
  
• The Fleishhacker Foundation
  
• The Warhol Foundation
  
• Frameline