Film Screening:

AMI Showcase--George Kuchar Program:

Weather Diary 3 (1988, 25min)
                 and
Weather Diary 5 (1989, 38min)

-- Introduced by Bill Brown, AMI!

Weather Diary 3
(George Kuchar, 1988, 25 min, USA, English, Color, DVD)

George goes to Oklahoma, but there's a lull in storm activity. It's spring, and though there's romance in the air, the lightning just doesn't strike; so George makes his own rain - of sorts. Despite the drought, the videos must go on. 

Weather Diary 5
(George Kuchar, 1989, 38 min, USA, English, Color, DVD)

A more socially-active addition to the Weather Diary series, we meet the natives and participate in the rituals of business and schooling and high hopes on the flat-lands.

About the Filmmaker and the Weather Diaries series:

A longtime luminary of underground cinema, George Kuchar defined his own inimitable track, producing ingenious, low-budget melodramas at a stunningly prolific pace since he began shooting 8mm as a teenager in the Bronx. The centerpiece of Kuchar’s work since the late ’80s were his “Weather Diaries”, which document his annual visits to the El Reno Motel in El Reno, Oklahoma. These trips are a means of temporarily escaping the muck of urban life while simultaneously engaging the artist’s childhood fascination with—and fear of—extreme weather. 

Like his extraordinary early films, the Weather Diaries' lack of pretension and gloss reveals a sincerely dramatic, funny and vulnerable perspective of the endlessly inspired and inspiring entity that is George Kuchar. The Weather Diaries, ranging in duration from just under a quarter of an hour to feature length, are structured by two parallel narratives, two central themes: Kuchar's body, especially his digestive tract, and the severe weather conditions that bring softball-sized hailstones and ominous cloud formations.

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: The Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), with support from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation