Author Archives: George

About George

George Kuchar Director: Pelagic Born with a twin brother, Mike, in 1942 on the Isle of Manhattan, we mainly grew up in the Bronx and were schooled in the world of commercial art. I supported myself, and my hobby of making 8mm movies, with paychecks from that Midtown Manhattan world of angst and ulcers. Earning enough money to switch to 16mm in the 1960s (1965), both of us started splicing together bigger strips of film and lugging around heavier projectors. The burgeoning underground film movement, which at that time was in full swing, gave us an outlet for our work and we continued grinding out our separate visions on celluloid. In the very early 1970s I was invited to teach filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute and have been there ever since. I came over with my dog but now use my cats as screen stars (sometimes) as he passed away. I became a traitor to the film department when 8mm video camcorders came on the market and jumped ship to start up in that dinghy medium. I enjoyed it and then sailed on to Hi-8, mini-DV and Digital 8. I don’t regret it one bit. I’m still in the film department because I still make pictures that move even though there’s a lot of “stills” in this sentence. I started making moving pictures in the 1950s so there’s a whole pile of them in my closets (over 200). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Kuchar
Posted on September 27, 2007

Pelagic: Movies in the Bronx

BY George | FILED UNDER Bronx, Pelagic

The borough of The Bronx was a wonderful place to shoot movies when I lived there. If you needed jungles and mountain streams there was always either The Bronx Botanical Gardens or Van Cortlandt Park. For prairie settings an area near Bruckner Blvd. was ideal and for seaside vistas there was Orchard Beach. A magnificent setting, bleak and empty (like an Antonioni film), was the wasteland which is now occupied by Co-op City. For bombed out, war locales a vast stretch of tenements that stood in the projected path of the Cross-Bronx Expressway made apocalyptic visions possible. For inspiration there was always the unobtrusive structure named GOLD MEDAL STUDIOS where scenes from the Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani film called, THE FUGITIVE KIND was shot. And then there was the splendor of the PARADISE THEATER on Fordham Road; a true movie palace of incredible opulence. What more could a budding filmmaker want? The sexual frustrations and religious traditions also helped fuel the imagination and the full-bodied figures of many Bronxites added fuel to the furnace of seething passions. Though the scenery may have shifted and changed here and there the dreams continue so follow that yellow stained brick road, who ever you are, and become the thing you always wanted to be! Good luck!”

See the map of this post from Bronx New York.

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