The holidays are a funny beast; everyone grows up believing their traditions are the norm, and everyone who celebrates differently is somehow alien. Even the most standard traditional holiday entertainments – your Charlie Browns and your Wonderful Lives and your John Denver and the Muppetses – might seem foreign to someone whose family never adopted them into their yearly routine (case in point: my family didn’t get cable until I was in the fifth grade, leading me to believe I’d stumbled across some undiscovered gem when I finally saw A Christmas Story). On the flipside, every family has a handful of weird, mutant traditions held by them and them alone. In an infinite multiverse, every holiday special and bit of ephemera may hold dominion over one family.
On Sunday, the Harvard Film Archive unveiled the latest installments of its two beloved holiday traditions: the Vintage Holiday Show and the George Kuchar Christmas Showcase. In terms of aesthetic, intended audience, and idea of holiday cheer, these two programs could scarcely have been more different. However, both offered glimpses into alternate universes of traditions and celebration, and both, in their own way, created a unique sense of seasonal warmth.
First on the docket was the Vintage Holiday Show, an eclectic assortment of odd and forgotten shorts, all screened on 16- and 35mm prints from the leasable film archive of the Boston Public Library (which was recently donated in its entirety to the HFA). Perhaps surprisingly, not all the films dealt specifically with any holiday at all; while some, such as the Rosemary Wells adaptation Max’s Christmas (narrated by Jenny Agutter!) and an Encyclopedia Brittanica staging of Pickwick Papers, specifically tackle Yuletide traditions, others, like the charmingly handmade European animations Six Penguins and Animal’s Best Friend, simply evoke a spirit of goodwill in a wintry setting. Some of the films feature moments of striking unintentional surrealism (such as the traditional mummer masks worn by the Canadian folk revivalists Figgy Duff– skip to 7:12 of the video below), but all feature a warm, off-kilter charm aided by the scratchy glow of saturated 16mm color, as well as the complimentary cookies provided by the HFA staff in the lobby.
https://youtu.be/JMzN9dxuTSE
The second program, entitled “Merry Christmas from George and Karen,” provided a decidedly different charm. Shot on VHS by legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar as part of his ongoing video diary (the archives of which were also left to the HFA after Kuchar’s passing in 2011), the films offer cracked snapshots of the director’s Christmases with an assortment of his offbeat artist friends (and cats). To the uninitiated, Kuchar’s videos can initially seem abrasive, but once you settle into the homemade aesthetic and jarring rhythms, the oddball humor becomes infectious. What most struck me, though, was the assorted recurring elements. Through the (non-chronological) shorts, we repeatedly visit with several of Kuchar’s friends (most memorably the flighty Karen Redgreen), spend quiet moments with his cats, and marvel at increasingly outlandish Christmas cards from John Waters. As the vignettes progress, we begin to feel something akin to the same warmth and familiarity that comes with reconnecting with one’s own weirdo friends at the holidays. They’re quirky as hell, but you can’t help but smile when you realize how little they’ve changed.
One final thought: during the first program, I was somewhat surprised by the amount of actual children in attendance. This perhaps should not have been a shock– this was, after all, a free matinee of children’s entertainment– but even in such a case, it’s unusual to see full families to attend an independent cinema in a major city. The children didn’t stick around for the Kuchar show, obviously (I’m not sure how many parents would bring their kids to see a film called Fill Thy Crack With Whiteness), but there was still a sense of revelry, with arthouse moviegoers (many likely old enough to remember Kuchar’s original heyday) chatting about film as if they were old friends. By virtue of the Harvard Film Archive’s tireless work, these films are becoming the holiday traditions they were always meant to be. Whether you celebrate by hanging the mistletoe or by cutting together ironic pastiches of inappropriate cartoons, the holidays can be a time for unabashed sentiment or for profound weirdness– and, most often, both.
Screened Sunday, 12/5 @ Harvard Film Archive
