Light Industry Presents An Evening with Donna Kerness
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DONNA KERNESS IN MIKE KUCHAR’S SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS (1966), CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ON DVD THROUGH GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
This Saturday, September 23rd, 2023, at 7:30pm, our friends at Light Industry are showing three films starring Donna Kerness, a legend of 1960s underground cinema.
As delineated in Light Industry’s program notes:
Kerness met George and Mike Kuchar while still in high school, and went on to feature in their early 8mm productions… she soon became an underground celebrity for her movie roles, praised by Jonas Mekas in Village Voice as one of the top ten ‘luminaries’ of the growing scene in 1964. Two of her most indelible appearances were in the twins’ first solo efforts, George’s HOLD ME WHILE I’M NAKED, where she plays a buxom starlet entangled with a hapless director, and Mike’s sci-fi featurette SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS… In her later years, Kerness relocated to San Antonio, where she pursues painting and has been working on her memoirs. This evening, we welcome her back to Brooklyn to talk about her illustrious and colorful career.
Saturday’s program commences with MODDLE TODDLE, a Bob Cowan-directed short from 1967, before culminating with HOLD ME WHILE I’M NAKED and SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS. The lattermost film is set a million years in the future, after "The Great War" has scourged the planet and mankind has forsaken science for self-indulgence in all the carnal pleasures afforded by art, food, and lust. Work is left to a race of enslaved androids. One rebellious male robot tires of pampering his lazy masters, and joins the humans in sin.
GME distributes Mike Kuchar’s SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS on DVD to the North American university market. Included as bonus features are Kuchar’s films THE SECRET OF WENDEL SAMSON (1966) and THE CRAVEN SLUCK (1967), as well as a 14-page booklet that transcribes an interview of Kuchar by Jack Stevenson.
Below, enjoy an excerpt from an interview with Kuchar, shot at Anthology Film Archives, in which he discusses the making of SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS and how his choice to use Kodachrome “home movie” film stock enabled his movie to have a bold color scheme — one that has never faded. (Source: Media Funhouse, YouTube).
GME also distributes 10 short films by Marie Losier in a collection titled Hello Happiness!, in addition to the filmmaker’s half hour-long portrait TONY CONRAD: DREAMINIMALIST, and recent features THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE and FELIX IN WONDERLAND. Losier was directly inspired by the Kuchar brothers’ films; George himself later commented: “Losier’s movies are as sweet and sassy as her name and well worth a gander or goose by all off-beat cineastes.”
Check out these titles on our website, and don’t miss the opportunity to see three Kerness-starring films on the big screen (on 16mm!) and hear Kerness discuss her life and career in person! More information about this screening can be found on Light Industry’s website.