RECOMMENDED
John Waters calls George and Mike Kuchar his first inspiration, and that’s as good a place as any to start. Testimony to the lasting influence of the filmmaking Kuchar twins, makers of such movies as “Hold Me While I’m Naked,” is the warm power of Jennifer Kloot’s documentary, “It Came From Kuchar,” winner of best film at the 2009 Chicago Underground Film Festival. An unlikely but articulate raft of interviewees offer testimony to inspiration drawn from these “8mm Mozarts” of the 1960s; the independent and underground filmmakers onscreen include Waters, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, Cory McAbee, Gerard Malanga, Buck Henry, Wayne Wang and scholar B. Ruby Rich. For the uninitiated, the clips are tingly eyeball kicks. It’s a bonfire’s worth of anecdotage about filmmakers not yet in their dotage. 96m. HD video. (Ray Pride)
“It Came From Kuchar” opens Friday at Facets.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
