Mike Kuchar
Mike Kuchar is an American underground filmmaker, actor, and artist. Kuchar is notable for his low-budget and camp films such as Sins of the Fleshapoids and The Craven Sluck.
Biography
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 and 1970s. He divided his time between New York City and his brother's San Francisco apartment until 2007, when he moved to San Francisco permanently; George died in 2011.During the 1980s and 1990s, Mike Kuchar created comics and illustrations for homoerotic publications including Meatmen, Gay Heart Throbs, First Hand, and Manscape, and continued to draw commissions afterward.
It Came From Kuchar, a documentary film about George and Mike Kuchar by Jennifer Kroot, premiered at the South by Southwest film festival on 14 March 2009.
In more recent years, Kuchar has focused on more intimate one person expressionistic films. At the Vienna International Film Festival in 2009, he unveiled two short films, Swan Song and Dumped. Swan Song features the pain of a young man tormented by his sensuality who is painted as an animal writhing in pain, and Dumped stars veteran stage actress Deirdre McGill in a portrait of a woman engaged in a deadly love triangle. Kuchar teaches in the film program at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Kuchar also worked as a cameraman for Rosa von Praunheim.
The Kuchar brothers collaborated on a book, Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool, a humorous memoir discussing four decades of filmmaking, with an introduction by director John Waters.
Partial filmography
The Pervert Born of the Wind Sins of the Fleshapoids Green Desire The Secret of Wendel Samson Fragments The Craven Sluck Variations Cycles Tales of the Bronx Chronicles Abode of the Snow Aqua Circus Didgeridoo Faraway Places Death Quest of the Ju-Ju Cults Dwarf Star Fable for a New Age Tone Poem Seascape Dumped Swan Song Midnight Suite Litany of the Seven Kisses Tickled Pink Fallen AngelsProduced at the San Francisco Art Institute:The Masque of Valhalla The Wings of Muru Blood Sucker The Passions: A Psycho-Drama Isle of the Sleeping Souls Circe Midnight Carnival
Produced at the Collective For Living Cinema's Dramatic Narrative Class:
- ''Scream of the Damned''