Rosy Hunt interviewed George Kuchar for CFF2009. His 16mm underground wonders, filmed in collaboration with his brother Mike, shook up the Bronx in the early sixties. Their influence over Warhol, Waters, Vadim and Lynch is obvious; but the Kuchar Brothers have always worked for love, not money.
Polar exploration is a costly business, and it was as much for fiscal reasons as for posterity that Shackleton hired photographer Frank Hurley to accompany him on his trans-antarctic adventure. Hurley was in later years criticised for manipulating his images for dramatic effect, but the grandeur of the Antarctic could never, and need never, be augmented by human imagination.
From the psychedelic pulp publications of the 70s to Devil’s Backbone, Spanish horror is an inimitable combination of passion, style and restraint. Even a lapse into self-parody such as Accion Mutante is worth watching, but this self referential irony is precisely what Nacho Cerdà strives to avoid with his feature film debut THE ABANDONED.
