George Kuchar has created quite a stir with his diaristic videotapes. Recorded with a highly portable 8mm camcorder, these chronicles of daily life are deceptively complex, linking wry, intimate observations to a beautifully crafted visual tableau. Though viewed by many as pure autobiography, Kuchar continually intervenes in the veracity of his own images. Subtle manipulations of mood and subject often give way to outright fabrications of the events we witness. This abyss of authenticity is Kuchar at his most intriguing. The Muffled Darkness begins routinely; Kuchar is in Los Angeles for AFI's National Video Festival. The tape offers a fleeting glimpse of the event; faces float by, niceties are exchanged. The home of a former student is Kuchar's temporary residence and his hostess, a formidable young woman working in "The Industry," haunts his mood. This haunting is translated into palpable alienation. Kuchar lurks in corners, transfixed by isolation, naked and vulnerable. Images throb with a resonant pain, lifting the diaristic commonplace to the heights of artifice. In Cult of the Cubicles, Kuchar forsakes the West Coast for its easterly antipode. A series of visitations to claustrophobic New York apartments reveals Kuchar's "Cult" to be a quizzical group of artists. The confinement of the "living" spaces is echoed by the cluttered, tight composition of the narrative flow. In one door and out another as we are led on a forced tour of artists' lofts, only to witness an intimate scene in which two romancers grapple on a shabby couch. A knock at the door disturbs their desperate embrace and Kuchar enters-perhaps trying to recapture his camcorder as it digests a moment of a "diary" he has not yet experienced? Not wanting to overlook Kuchar's talents as a dramaturge, PFA includes Calling Dr. Petrov in tonight's program. Strongly reminiscent of his films, this videotape was a class project from the San Francisco Art Institute where Kuchar teaches. Kuchar provided the uproarious script and direction; his students built the sets and performed. The story involves a shady doctor's clinic and a dying patient whose biggest infirmity seems to be a lack of medical attention. Almost arabesque in its wild art direction, Calling Dr. Petrov uses multi-layered images for a dense but delectable text. Relying on single takes, Kuchar recorded key scenes at specific points on a videocassette and then filled in the blank moments with connective tissue. The result is a drunken drama luxuriating in the aleatory and the found. -Steve Seid