Mark Ellinger
Birth : 1949-01-01,
History
Mark Ellinger is an American composer raised in Ohio. Ellinger met and became friends with filmmaker Curt McDowell while studying at the San Francisco Art Institute. Between 1971 and 1987, he taught classes at the Art Institute and the Academy of Art. He worked as a recording engineer, sound designer, electronics technician, composer and actor on various independent films. In 1982, he opened the 16-track recording studio Truth and Beauty.
The comings and goings of the late underground filmmaker, Curt McDowell—and the people and activities that came and went along with him—are the themes that run through this existential diary of daily life. McDowell was dying from AIDS-related illnesses during the production of the diary. “An elegy for McDowell, the videowork captures Kuchar’s mournful remembrances of his long-lasting friendship with the young filmmaker. But it also has the inquisitive charm, perverse humor, and quirky candor that places Kuchar’s visual expressions in a gritty niche all their own.”
Music
Blend of documentary and domestic melodrama featuring a series of sexually charged vignettes inspired by a piece of toilet graffiti.
Music
Orson Welles reads the poem especially for this film by Larry Jordan, which is dedicated to the late Wallace Berman, and is made possible by a grant from The National Endowment Of The Arts.
Charlie Hammond
An eccentric and alcoholic widow hosts a motley assortment of travelers (four men, three women and one gorilla) who arrive one eventful night to get out of a torrential rainstorm.
Music
An eccentric and alcoholic widow hosts a motley assortment of travelers (four men, three women and one gorilla) who arrive one eventful night to get out of a torrential rainstorm.
Story
An eccentric and alcoholic widow hosts a motley assortment of travelers (four men, three women and one gorilla) who arrive one eventful night to get out of a torrential rainstorm.
"One of Kuchar’s few feature-length works is this ribald pastiche to postwar Hollywood melodrama, that period when the studios were trying very hard to be adult. The intricate, overheated plot involves a nurse trapped in an unhappy marriage who escapes the big city in search of greener pastures in Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma. Swerving from earnest homage to dark satire, Kuchar simultaneously imitates and savages the legacy of Sirk, Preminger and Minnelli that inspired him, gleefully intertwining the suggestive and the scatological, while also pointing towards the later postmodern parodies of Cindy Sherman. The Devil’s Cleavage is also a rich time capsule of 1970s San Francisco, replete with cameos from Curt McDowell and Art Spiegelman." —hcl.harvard.edu
A series of vignettes illustrating sexual fantasies.
A short comedy by Curt McDowell.
"A surreal meditation on a cigarette billboard using a very strange ballerina as an allegory for something or other Indescribably funny." - Seattle International Film Festival, 1978
Swinger
Eve is stuck in an abusive relationship with her lover, Frank, but after attending a few swing parties, she begins to lose her inhibitions in more ways than one.
Mean Brother
Two men hypnotize their roommate and attempt to force him to fall in love.
Two brothers are stood up and lament through song.
A short film in two parts by Curt McDowell.
Curt McDowell has a confession for his parents.
“PEED INTO THE WIND smears across the screen like one of those dirty underground comic books. It’s loaded with a lot of big scenes and unusual looking people that make this epic resemble a clogged toilet. Unfortunately, since several of the performers were not as loyal as Ainslie Pryor and John Thomas, the plot is difficult to follow but in no way hinders the sewer-like sequences. It’s quite enjoyable and possesses the releasing power of an enema.” –George Kuchar
Willy and Billy attempt to entertain while struggling with their primal urges.
Dave Powers
A San Francisco bohemian deadbeat sits around his apartment and fantasizes about women.
A musical revue of lewd routines.
