Oddball Films

Oddball Films welcomes award-winning video pioneer Denise Gallant to our Cinema Soiree, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. This show represents 40 years of video effects by Denise Gallant, continually using the Synopsis Video Synthesizer, an early analog synth, designed by Rob Schafer and built by Denise Gallant. The core concept of the Synopsis Video Synth was to be completely interactive with music, which was unique among early video synthesizers. It was also one of the first video synths to make use of the new ‘integrated circuit’ technology, which made the synthesizers much more stable, reliable and smaller, so that they could easily be built into small boxes and carried to live music shows. Gallant will be here in person to discuss the concept and design of the device as well as doing a Live Demo with the Synopsis Synth as well as presenting clips and videos from four periods of work with the Synopsis Synth. 1972-76: Early experiments in sound-controlled video and pre-video synthesizer clips. 1978-80: Live Video Effects at Clubs in San Francisco including video with Tuxedomoon, Indoor Life, Cabaret Voltaire, Group 87, The Humans, Daevid Allen of Gong, and a short interview with Brian Eno from Video West. 1980-86: Live Video Effects and Edited videos with Suburban Lawns, Wall of VooDoo, Supertramp and selections from Billboard Award Winner “Watercolors” with music by Steve Roach. Later works (1990+) Video with dancer Tandy Beal, 1990 corporate work including ABC Elections, Denny Doherty of The Mamas and the Papas, Burning Man projects and NAMM TEC award clips of Eric Burdon and documentary of Slash of Guns & Roses.

To see a preview of the show that Gallant has compiled: https://vimeo.com/130605068

Date: Thursday, June 18th, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

About Denise Gallant:

Denise Gallant graduated from UCLA, doing early experiments in animation, and was inspired by the very early electronic films of John Whitney Sr., Stephen Beck and the animations of John and Faith Hubley. After graduating from UCLA, she met up with her long time friend, Rob Schafer, who at a very early age, was involved in his father’s company, Schafer Electronics, working with radio electronics.

During the summer of 1977, Denise went to NBC, where she edited news, and was most likely the first woman video editor in LA.

In 1980, Gallant formed “Synopsis Video”, where she immediately started doing early music videos for musicians in the emerging 'New Wave', Punk, and 'New Age' scenes, and later with groups with wide spectrums of music such as Devo, Tangerine Dream(from Germany) and Supertramp (with Renee Daalder from Holland), and music producer Kim Fowley. Her effects were also 'bought' by Grateful Dead for their live shows. Denise performed live at many clubs in LA, and was known as the first VJ at the time – in clubs such as the Country Club in Reseda and Club Lingerie (Visions) on Sunset Blvd.

Simultaneously, Denise worked closely with the New Age musicians such as Steve Roach and Richard Burmer, along with visual laser artist, Brian Samuels, capturing these with a black and white video camera, which was then colorized and processed through the colorizer. Several years of this work (1980-84) were compiled into the 16 song video project, “Watercolors”, the first New Age Video on the Tower Records label, which also won a Billboard Music Video Award in 1986.

In 1984 Denise went to work for Image West, the first video special effects company in LA, where they created high end commercials, television station promos and logo designs, including work with the first video 3D system in LA.

Denise Gallant left LA in 1986, and married Kevin Monahan, who worked with E-MU Music Sytems for 20 years, creating the first sound library for a music keyboard instrument – the Emulator. Denise worked as a Product Manager and Specialist at such companies as Chyron, CMX, Xaos Tools, Electo-GIG (Holland), and Distreet Logic-Autodesk (Montreal), including several high-end editing, compositing effects and 3D projects on the Silicon Graphics platforms.

Kevin and Denise are presently busy with video production and editing, most for notably the yearly TEC Awards show at the NAMM convention in LA. Denise continues to use the hundreds of hours of video effects for her more avant garde productions – video backdrops for dancers, musicians (including the TEC awards) and video sculptures of Burning Man.

About The Synopsis Video Synthesizer:

The video synth was originally designed and conceived at UCSC, through the Electronic Music Department, under Gordon Mumma.

The first video experiments included an early Moog Synthesizer, plugged into a TV, along with video feedback. Rob Schafer and Denise performed live shows with musicians creating visuals that interacted with electronic music.

The core concept of the Synopsis Video synth was to be completely interactive with music, which was unique among early video synthesizers. It was also one of the first video synth to make use of the new ‘integrated circuit’ technology, which made the synthesizers much more stable, reliable and smaller, so that they could easily be built into small boxes and carried to live music shows.

By 1979, they started building these designs on permanent circuit boards, inside of an Aries Synth cabinet. The first modules included a colorizer, which was unique, as the controls were Luminance, Saturation and Hue, (LSH) rather then RGB. This made the synth much easier to control in a 'live' concert situation. The colorizer also was designed with 720 degrees of color, rather then 360 degrees, which allowed the synthesizer to create beautiful rainbow hues.

Rob also designed several high frequency oscillators to create both horizontal and very fine vertical patterns in video, with triangle, square, and circle waveforms. The last major component of the core box was a Gentle Electric Pitch Follower, created by Carl Fravel. Through Kevin Monahan's connections with Carl, Denise built several of the modules to obtain the module, also built into the video synth.

The Pitch Follower allowed both pitch and amplitude of the music to interact with Hue, Saturation of Luminance, as well as all of the oscillator patterns.

Rob went on to design an 8 level video keyer, which became the primary control module. This 8 level keyer has 12 inputs and 6 knobs per key, controlling video, oscillator or/and music inputs into LSU, as well as inverted signals. The final major piece of the synth was a very unique four level fader which elegantly blended video as a hard key all the way through to a fade, and all variations in-between. Kevin Monahan (of EMU electronic music systems) was also influential, helping with a live sequencer design.

The first uses of the synth were at live clubs in San Francisco (1978-79), as the synth was being built – primarily in clubs like Savoy Tivoli, The Stone, and The City on Broadway. Denise and Rob would bring the synth and set it up with video monitors on the stage.

The high end circuitry in the video synth also attracted interest from the film special effects industry in LA. Brian and Denise then worked on several films, with film effect giants such as Doug Trumbell of Boss films and John Dykstra of Apogee. The most notable of these was the video synth effects seen on the monitors in the movie Brainstorm, with Natalie Wood and Christopher Walken.

About Oddball Films

Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.

Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 films, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 89th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 89: Visionaries of Time and Space, explores artists working with speed and light, time and space. By slowing and accelerating time, compressing and distorting space (and distance), arresting and suggesting movement, these filmmakers explode the boundaries of conventional film, inducing a meditative, trance-inducing and in some cases a near-epileptic response in the viewer. Other artists use new technologies creating invisible art by magnetism, prisms, lights, moving objects, converging lines, and number patterns. Films include the mesmerizing documentary Kinetic Art in Paris(1971), a viscerally challenging, kaleidoscopic homage to the future of perception, featuring some of the world’s foremost kinetic artists; Lapis(1965), made by cinema pioneer James Whitney consisting entirely of hundreds of constantly moving points of light and one of the most accessible experimental films ever made; Art For Tomorrow(1969) an eye-popping exploration of experimental tech-oriented art incorporating early IBM computers, cybernetics, heart beat triggers, and invisible art by magnetism all narrated by Walter Cronkite; Free Fall (1964) famed Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett creates a synesthetic experience through the intensification of image and sound utilizing single-frame editing and tribal music; Maya Deren’s A Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) incorporates film techniques -reprinting, varying camera speeds, and direction and movement of the camera-integrating representational performance art into abstract, non-narrative filmmaking through intersecting currents of subconscious, parallel realities; Paul Roubaix’s Allegro Ma Troppo(1963) is a hyperkinetic vision of Parisian nightlife between 6PM and 6AM, shot at two frames per second utilizing automatic cameras; A Chairy Tale (1957) the surrealistic virtuoso collaboration of three of the geniuses of the National Film Board of Canada; Norman McLaren, Claude Jutra and Evelyn Lambert, about a chair that refuses to be sat upon, forcing a young man to perform an acrobatic and comedic dance with the chair, with music by Ravi Shankar; and The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979)Mike Jitlov’s legendary high speed mind-blowing special effects short.

Date: Thursday, June 25, 2015 at 8:00PM

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Kinetic Art in Paris (Color,1971)

The works of Kinetic artists Julio Le Parc, Victor Vasarely, John Rock Yvar aren’t the only things explored in detail in this ultra rare, quirky documentary that features music from the short-lived cult British pop duo White Trash. Viscerally challenging, this kaleidoscopic homage to light, sound, motion and restraint is quintessential viewing for anyone with a desire to be fascinated by anything…even if just for a moment. Don’t miss this!

Lapis (Color, 1965)

Cinema pioneer James Whitney’s film consists entirely of hundreds of constantly moving points of light. Lapis performs such marvelous transformations of positive and negative space, projected color and after-image, similarity and difference, that the viewer cannot help but contemplate the relationships of the unit to the whole, the individual consciousness to the cosmos, of space to time - and not a dry, forced meditation, but a supremely sensual, purely visual dialogue.

Like a single mandala moving within itself, the particles surge around each other in constant metamorphosis, a serene ecstasy of what Jung calls "individuation." For 10 minutes, a succession of beautiful designs grows incredibly, ever more intricate and astounding; sometimes the black background itself becomes the pattern, when paths are shunned by the moving dots. A voluptuous raga soundtrack by Ravi Shankar perfectly matches the film's flow, and helped to make LAPIS one of the most accessible "experimental films" ever made.

The images were all created with handmade cels, and the rotation of more than one of these cels creates some of the movements. John Whitney, his brother had built a pioneer computerized animation set-up—the prototype for the motion-control systems that later made possible such special effects as the "Star Gate" sequence of 2001. James used that set-up to shoot some of his handmade artwork, since it could ensure accuracy of placement and incremental movement.

*For more information about James Whitney’s work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Whitney_(filmmaker)

Art for Tomorrow (Color, 1969)

“The artist is beginning to react to the impact of science and technology and beginning to come to terms with it. The artist better be rather careful or he will be losing his job and the engineer will become the artist of the future.”

In this film, from the Twentieth Century television program narrated by Walter Cronkite the art of the future is foreseen in new techniques demonstrated by artists and engineers using distinctive methods and new technology including computers, cybernetics, heart beat triggers, invisible art by magnetism, prisms, lights, moving objects, converging lines, and number patterns. This fascinating look at the “future past” features a kaleidoscopic portrait of avant-garde art works by Yaacov Agam (who uses strobe lights), Wen-Ying Tsai (vibrating steel rods), John Mott-Smith (computer-generated ideas), *Jean Tinguely (machine-made sculpture), Victor Vasarely’s early experiments with IBM computers, Jean Dupuy and many more.

*Here’s a link to a clip from Tinguely’s mind-blowing Homage to New York (1960) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqsWqBX4wQ

Free Fall (B+W, 1964)

Free Fall features dazzling pixilation, in-camera superimpositions, percussive tribal music, syncopated rhythms and ironic juxtapositions. Using a brisk “single-framing” technique, Arthur Lipsett attempts to create a synesthetic experience through the intensification of image and sound. Citing the film theorist Sigfreud Kracauer, Lipsett writes, “Throughout this psychophysical reality, inner and outer events intermingle and fuse with each other – 'I cannot tell whether I am seeing or hearing – I feel taste, and smell sound – it's all one – I myself am the tone.'”

*Note: Free Fall was intended as a collaboration with the American composer John Cage, modeled on his system of chance operations. However, Cage subsequently withdrew his participation fearing Lipsett would attempt to control and thereby undermine the aleatory organization of audio and visuals.

Ritual in Transfigured Time (B+W, 1946)

Maya Deren's Ritual in Transfigured Time is a formalized, aesthetic composition of regimentation and studies of dynamic human forms that prefigure the films of such diverse filmmakers as Yvonne Rainer and Claire Denis. Deren incorporates representational performance art into abstract, non-narrative filmmaking through intersecting currents of subconscious, parallel realities, revealing the film's tone and intrinsic logic through the choreography of organic bodies in performance of ritual, and in the process, creates a haunting and sublime exposition on the spatial (rather than linear) dimensionality of time, synchronicity, and the potentiality of fate. With Rita Christiani, Maya Deren, Anaïs Nin, Gore Vidal and Frank Westerbrook.

Allegro Ma Troppo (Color, 1963)

A Parisian evening, conveyed through automatic cameras and imaginative cinematography of the life of Paris between 6PM and 6AM shot at two frames per second utilizing automatic cameras. From strippers to car crashes, Paul Roubaix’s Allegro Ma Troppo evokes the intensity and variety of nocturnal life in the City of Light through speeded-up action, freeze-frame, and virtuoso editing.

A Chairy Tale (B+W, 1957)

Shot partly with pixilation and partly at 12 frames a second this surrealistic fable is the directorial collaboration of three of the geniuses of the National Film Board of Canada; Norman McLaren, Claude Jutra and Evelyn Lambert. The musical accompaniment is by Indian musicians Ravi Shankar, Chatur Lal, and Modu Mullick. In this film, a chair, animated by Evelyn Lambart, refuses to be sat upon, forcing a young man to perform an acrobatic and comedic dance with the chair.

“A Chairy Tale” won the Canadian Film Award for Best Arts and Experimental Film, as well as a BAFTA Special Award, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Live Action Short Subject.

The Wizard of Speed and Time (Color, 1979)

A young man in a green wizard costume runs throughout America at super speed. Along the way, he gives a pretty girl a swift lift to another city, gives golden stars to other women who want a trip themselves. He then slips on a banana peel and comically crashes into a film stage, which he then brings to life in magical ways.

Jittlov is a special effects technician, and produced all of the special effects in the film himself, many through stop motion animation.

This short film originally was shown as a segment of an episode of

The Wonderful World of Disney. The film segment then began to be shown at science fiction conventions around the country, gaining popularity, prompting Jittlov to eventually create a (semi) fictionalized account of how this short film came to be, in the form of a feature film.

Curator's Biography:
Stephen Parr’s previous programs have explored the erotic underbelly of sex-in-cinema (The Subject is Sex), the offbeat and bizarre (Oddities Beyond Belief), the pervasive effects of propaganda (Historical/Hysterical?) and oddities from his archives (Strange Sinema). He is the director of Oddball Film+Video and the San Francisco Media Archive (www.sfm.org), a non profit archive that preserves culturally significant films. He is a co-founder of Other Cinema DVD and a member of the Association of Moving Archivists (AMIA) where he is a frequent presenter.

About Oddball Films

Oddball Films and guest curator Christina Yglesias present How to be an Artist. This mix of never before screened gems and oddball classics will include instructional art films, experimental weirdness, sexy sculptors, and meditations on the meaning of art itself. First, see if you have what it takes for a career in the arts with Art Talent Test (1950s) feauturing Michael Kent, "world-renowned talent scout". If you pass the test, move on to Sculpture: Process of Discovery (1975). Rock sculptor Norm Hines will wow you with his thoughtful process and his rock hard abs in this accidentally erotic film. Get a mini fantastical art history lesson with the lovely animated film Seven Arts (1958) in which adorable dinosaurs witness and take part in early humans discovering the arts. Things will get weird with Exquisite Corpse (assembled in 2012), a film created by Oddball audience members from scraps of disparate films. Go beyond the elementary with the funky and fun instructional film Crayon (1964). We'll keep things funky with Art from Found Materials (1971), where one man's trash becomes another man's ugly sculpture. Learn how to keep your paintbrushes happy with Care of Art Materials (1948), an adorable mix of imaginative animation and live action. Now that you've made it this far, get existential with What is Art? Art (1966). The evening will finish with a beautiful, entirely hand-painted film of mysterious origin Kathy's Museum Class (1970's, Color). Early comers will get to see a super-secret behind-the-scenes film.

 Date: Friday, June 26th, 2015 at 8:00PM

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco 

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

 Featuring:  

Exquisite Corpse (assembled in 2012, color & B&W)

 Created collaboratively by Oddball audience members, this film is creates a lovely collage of various clips. Let this true exquisitite Corpse Film inspire you to get experimental.   

Art from Found Materials* (1971, Color) 

Find the inspiration to "make imaginative art objects: (aka: turn trash into ugly art) with this fun film with an even funkier score.   

Kathy's Museum Class* (1970, Color)  

This mysterious film is entirely hand-painted (otherwise known as "direct animation") for a mesmerizing colorful abstract effect.   

Care of Art Materials* (1948, B+W)  

Bob Ross would love this cute and helpful film that is a mix of animation and live action, with an animated mouse instructor and brushes with sad faces.   

Sculpture: Process of Disovery* (1975, Color)  

This look into the process of sculptor Norm Hines becomes softcore erotica in some of the moments when, as he says, "It's just me and the rock." He hauls stones from the quarry shirtless and glistening, oils up completed stone works, and blows minds with his thoughtful insights on process and art.   

Seven Arts (Color, 1958) 

The development of human culture by the first caveman, who, frightened by his own shadow, attacks it with his axe to create the first work of art. By accident, the first examples of architecture, drama, literature, and music come into existence. Adorable dinosaurs observe, enjoy, and participate in the developments. From Romanian animator Ion Popescu-Gopo.  

What is Art? Art* (1966, Color)

 This educational film for children will get us to stop thinking so hard about the title's question. Covering the elements of form, color, and texture- we see the wonder of art for arts sake.   

Art Talent Test(Color, 1950s) 

Michael Kent, “World-renowned Talent Scout” wants you to know that there are valuable careers in the arts, but only if you have the talent. We’ve all seen the ads from Art Instruction Schools in the back of magazines for decades. You may have even tried your hand at recreating that cheeky little turtle in a cap. Now, see an early-promotional film from the late 50's or early 60's and see if a career in the arts is for you.   

Crayon (Color, 1964)

 Crayon is not afraid to go-go-go outside the lines . . . with a cool vibraphone score! Schoolroom auteur Stelios Roccos brings his vibrant style to an inspiring study of amazing crayon techniques from plain old coloring-in, to the melty fun of encaustic and batik.  

*Oddball Premieres!       

About Oddball Films 

Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.  

Oddball Films presents Sexual Miseducation, a night of vintage 16mm sex ed shorts, burlesque, smut and stag films from the 1910s-1970s. This sinful program features tons of new discoveries from the archive, including one of the very first pornos, stop-motion bean bags getting it on, homegrown local erotica, and even stereoscopic nudies.  Peter Sellers voices a bumbling father explaining sex to his child in the hilarious Halas and Batchelor cartoon Birds, Bees and Storks (1965). Find out Are You Ready For Sex? (1978) with the help of a bearded doctor and several melodramatizations. Hop on board for what some say is America's first hardcore porn (and the only hardcore we will be screening this night), the notorious silent stag film A Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (1915). San Francisco co-stars in The Screening Room (1970s), an erotic tale of two lovers shooting a porno in Renaissance costumes, then seeing themselves on a North Beach screen. A buxom blonde marionette gets into burlesque with Doll Dance (1940s). Mrs. John Barrymore does the least enticing striptease you've never seen in the entirely unsexy How to Undress for your Husband (1937). San Francisco's own radical sexual-awareness ministry the Multi-Media Resource Centers brings us three super short-shorts on the lighter side of sex-ed: bean bag frogs get it on in a variety of human sexual positions in The Love Toad (1970), the all-too sensual act of peeling citrus in Orange (1970), and a hyper-speed sexual rendezvous in A Quickie (1969). Play with your toys in a non-XXX excerpt of bizarro porno Orgy of the Dolls (1970s). Plus, four unscreened 1940s nudie cuties: Busman's Holiday, a film for serious artists only, Fanny with Cheeks of Tan and Tantalizing Torso from Seaside Films, and the double vision of Stereoscopic Smut! Early birds will watch as a high school class makes a film about contraceptives in The Birth Control Movie (1982).

Date: Thursday, July 2nd, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Birds, Bees and Storks (Dir. John Halas, Color, 1965)

A father sets out to explain the facts of life to his son, but becomes increasingly embarrassed to the point where his explanations are so vague as to be incomprehensible. Inspired by Gerard Hoffnung's 1960 book of the same name, this is a delightful and all too familiar study of the embarrassed middle-aged British male, as a father attempts to explain the facts of life to his son but ends up delivering a monologue so packed with euphemisms about birds, bees and butterflies that it ends up being totally incoherent. Produced by the esteemed Halas & Batchelor Animation Studio, the visual style (inspired directly by Hoffnung's drawings) is simple in the extreme - for much of the film, we just watch the father squirming and blushing in his chair, which focuses our attention both on Peter Sellers' monologue and director John Halas' subtle visual characterization, all nervous tics and fidgeting.

Are You Ready for Sex? (Color, 1978)

Harvey Caplan, MD, a gentle, bearded man, guides teens through a discussion of sexuality. Featuring clips of scenarios between potential lovers with voice-over narration (should I? what will he think?), Caplan provides us all with a lot to think about before making the big leap.

The Screening Room (Color, 1970s)

A couple, man and woman, walk through San Francisco with great old vintage shots of Geary Street, Post Street, Union Square. They walk into the Screening Room theater, and see a porn film on the screen. They walk to a back room, and once through the door, are now on a hill, in the country, wearing Renaissance costumes. They roll around in the grass, removing their clothes, and making out. They walk back into the theater wearing their modern clothes, and see themselves, in costume, on the screen, then leave the theater.

Doll Dance (B+W, 1940s)

A 1940s Burlesque tit for tat dance number with Arlene and Rene. Both ladies are lovely, only Arlene has someone pulling her strings.

How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (B+W, 1937)

An exercise in exhibitionism and the least titillating striptease ever starring Elaine Barrie AKA Mrs. John Barrymore (!) wife of the famed Hollywood legend. It's a wonder she was his last wife!

Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (B+W, 1915)

This infamous stag short is touted as being the earliest example of American hardcore pornography, though its actual date of production is still hotly debated. A motorist stops to pick up a couple of lovely ladies from the side of the road and they embark on the ride of their lives! Silent with added soundtrack.

The Love Toad (1970, Color, Greg Von Buchau)

A comedic stop-motion animation featuring two amorous bean-bag toads that get it on and demonstrate a number of sexual positions, from missionary, to oral, to froggy style. From the sexually progressive Multi-Media Resource Center.

Orange (1970, Color, Karen Johnson)

A sensual rendering of the evocative act of peeling an orange. Extreme close-ups of hand peeling and gouging an orange and its flesh . Also from the Multi-Media Resource Center

A Quickie (1969, black and White, Dirk Kortz)

A couple meet for a quick sexual interlude, and when we say quick, we mean hyper-speed!

Busman's Holiday (B+W, 1940s)

"This motion picture is produced exclusively for study by artists" warns an intertitle, but something tells me this nudie cutie made its way to more than one stag party! The "story" centers around a lovely young lady who is not only a model, but a budding photographer as well. Thank goodness she's a bit of a klutz and ends up revealing a lot more of herself than her talent!

Stereoscopic Smut (B+W, 1940s)

Yes, you are seeing double! It's double trouble in this unique piece of vintage erotica. A lovely brunette undresses for the cameras. Originally made to be viewed in a specialized stereoscopic viewer, this lovely lady won't be in 3D, but she's still got twice the goods!

Nudie Cuties from Seaside Films (B+W, 1940s)

Fannie with Cheeks of Tan, Tantalizing Torso

Two titillating tales featuring bikini-clad women and an over-the-top narrator. Shot over 60 years ago these risque shorts always feature women doing things that expose themselves like applying suntan lotion, trying on clothes and “getting comfortable” in the hot sun. A sexy and sexist look at the lighter side of eroticism in the 1940s.

The Orgy of the Dolls (Color, 1970s, excerpt)

A truly bizarre piece of pornography (we will cut before it gets XXX) that brings new meaning to "playing with your toys." A woman goes into a doll shop after hours and brings to life a bunch of human-sized horny dolls.

For the Early Birds:

The Birth Control Movie (Color, 1982)

Uses the format of a high school filmmaking class project of making a film on reproduction and contraception to present information on physiological processes and contraceptive methods and devices. There are rap-sessions, jam-sessions, uncomfortable conversations with parents about diaphragms and the meta-moment when the students all sit down to watch their film on a 16mm projector!

About Oddball Films

Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.

Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 91, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 films, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 91st program of classic, strange, and unusual films. For Strange Sinema 91: Oddball’s Strangest Hits!, a surreal and sometimes stupefying selection of some of the strangest films in the Strange Sinema series. Drawn from a wealth of genres - including educational, mental hygiene, pop psychology, quack science and even smut - this program highlights the deep diversity and madcap mayhem that make this series so utterly strange. Featured films include The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much(1988) a wacky anti-drug howler about an alcohol and drug addicted cat, Frank Film (1973), Frank Mouris’s classic of independent cinema presents 11,592 separate shots of common objects forming complex, rapidly moving patterns that Andrew Sarris called "a nine-minute evocation of America's exhilarating everythingness”,Toothache of the Clown(1972), a clown goes to the dentist in this bizarre and nightmarish kids educational film, Blind as a Bat(1956), the crackpot Christian Moody Science “Bat Truck” goes on location to study the secrets of bat navigation, Rendezvous (1976), director Claude LeLouche’s infamous, one-take high speed drive through the streets of Paris, Help! My Snowman’s Burning Down (1964) Carson Davidson’s award-winning beatnik dada rhapsody with jazz score by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, You Asked For It! (1957) - watch Dr. Cole in this television kinescope demonstrate the science behind putting a red-hot metal poker on your tongue-painlessly!, The Great Saw Came Nearer and Nearer(1944), a sexist and comedic juke box Soundie featuring Cindy Walker getting terrorized by a beau who will saw her in half unless she marries him!, Ersatz (1961), one of the oddest animated films ever - one man inflates everything he needs for the perfect day at the beach, including a girlfriend (!) in this mid-century Oscar-winning gem, it’s monkey time starring Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp (1971) as a detective from APE (Agency to Prevent Evil) as he battles a dentist who implants radio transmitter into teeth!, Deciso 3003 (1982), the world’s first alien teen sex ed puppet film where even puppets (designed by legendary Julie Taymor) feel ashamed and Sun Healing: The Ultra Violet Way With Life Lite(1940s), cinematic curio promoting a quack medical device as a cure for skin disease. Plus! Allergy test films, men in diapers and home movie hijinks!

Date: Friday, August 21st, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much(Color, 1988) a wacky anti-drug howler about an alcohol and drug using cat,

This wacky anti-drug film about an alcohol and drug using cat features Pat the Cat as he hits the skids before finally reaching out for help- an Oddball favorite! Narrated by Julie Harris.

Frank Film(Color, 1973)

This stop-motion classic of independent cinema presents 11,592 separate shots of common objects forming complex, rapidly moving patterns accompanied by two continuous narrative soundtracks played simultaneously. The result is a collective autobiography that Andrew Sarris called "a nine-minute evocation of America's exhilarating everythingness.” This film has screened over 45 times at Oddball-it’s that great!

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Toothache of The Clown (Color, 1971)

Made to assuage children’s fears of the dentist, this film manages to combine nothing but the creepiest elements into one terrifying mind-scratcher. Hallucinating from pain, or laughing gas, this clown has surreal nightmares of children dressed as dental technicians pulling arts and crafts out of the insides of other children dressed as decaying teeth. This is one “trip” to the dentist you won’t want to miss.

Blind as a Bat(Color, 1956), the Moody Science bat truck goes on location to study the secrets of bat navigation,

The crackpot Christians at the Moody Science bat truck go on location to study the secrets of bat navigation. Their in-house “mammal abuse experiments” show us the science of bat radar. Somewhere between the explanations of echo location and the scenes where the bats themselves fly into walls, you’ll fall in love. An Oddball audience favorite.

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Rendezvous(Color, 1976) In 1976, at the end of a film shoot, Director Claude LeLouch (A Man and a Woman) found himself in possession of four things: a camera with ten minutes of film left, a gyroscopically stabilized camera mount, a sports car, and an idea: to film a mad dash (at speeds up to 140 mph) through the early morning streets of Paris. Denied the necessary permits, he shot the film guerrilla-style, in one take, with no special effects and no street closures. No one was hurt, his subsequent arrest was brief, and the film has become a legend. One take, no film tricks- you won’t believe your eyes.

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Help! My Snowman’s Burning Down (Color, 1964)

This academy award-nominated short (and winner of 14 international awards) by Carson Davidson stars Bob Larkin (later in the cult film Putney Swope) as a Beatnik who lives on a boat dock off Manhattan with only bathroom furnishings. A visceral tapestry woven together by stop motion and surreal special effects, this is another Oddball audience favorite. With a snazzy jazz score by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.

You Asked For It! (B+W, 1957)

In this variety show that was wildly popular throughout the 1950s, host Art Baker invited experts to perform any manner of idiotic, dangerous, and ill-advised acts that a bloodthirsty audience could dream up. These stunts included reenacting William Tell shooting an apple off his son’s head, and in this episode a scientist demonstrates how fire walking works. By putting his tongue on a white-hot piece of iron. Then sticking his finger in molten lead. Then breaking a sizzling steel rod with a bare foot. They don’t make live TV like this any more!

The Great Saw Came Nearer and Nearer (B+W, 1944)

This musical and sexist comedy Soundie (jukebox film) features Cindy Walker as a girl terrorized by her beau with a buzz saw unless she marries him! Laughably awful!

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Ersatz(Color, 1961)

This Yugoslavian animated short was the first foreign animated film to win an Oscar. A fat man goes to the beach and inflates everything he needs… like a boat, a tent, and a shark. He manages to have a fine time until he inflates a girlfriend for himself and realizes that women are too much damn trouble. A gem of mid-century modern style!

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Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp(1971), Get Smart meets James Bond as A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil) monkey detective Lance Link battles a C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan) dentist who secretly implants radio transmitters into teeth.

Deciso 3003 (1982)

Peter Wallach, Eli Wallach’s brother directed this bizarre anti-drug PSA, in the height of the “Just Say No” ‘80s. Two couples of double-headed alien teens set out on what they think is just going to be any other intergalactic trip to the Drive-In (to see Vincent Price in The Fly)m but when one of them thinks it’ll be cool to take some meteor pills and get handsy with his date, we all learn that being a teenager isn’t easy for anyone in the galaxy. In an amazing 10 minutes, the aliens cover every poor decisions from reckless driving to date rape to drug abuse. Wow. The puppets were made by Julie Taymor, director of Across the Universe and Titus, and Eli Wallach narrates, though neither is credited. Perhaps, like the teen alien flying home alone, they too feel the shame.

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Sun Healing: The Ultra Violet Way With Life Lite(B+W,1940s) This curio promotes a quack medical device as a cure for skin disease. Bizarre!

Stephen Parr
San Francisco archivist, imagemaker and curator Stephen Parr, founder of Oddball Film+Video has a long history of presenting and archiving the unusual. Since the 1970s Parr has produced and documented live performances of John Cage, Christian Marclay and The Ramones, screened his signature pop culture montages from the Danceteria in New York to the Moscow Cinematheque. He’s created found footage based films such as Historical/Hysterical?, The Subject is Sex and Euphoria! which have screened worldwide in venues such as The Anthology Film Archive, Jaaga in Bangalore, South India and the Leeds International Film Festival. He curates an eclectic weekly film series-Oddball Films at his archive and is a frequent presenter at film and media seminars and symposiums. He is an active member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. He has currently completed Laservision, a program of films exploring the history of lasers and holography inaugurating the Science, Art and Cinema series at Miami’s Frost Museum.

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson from Alexa Kenin - A Memorial Afterschool Special Triple Feature, a special tribute to the child star Alexa Kenin who passed away 30 years ago to this day, under disputed and curious circumstances. A talented girl with a seemingly bright future, Alexa Kenin died tragically at the age of 23, just as she was set to cross over into adult rolls. Cast and crew on her final film Pretty in Pink were told she died of asthma, while others heard rumors of being beaten to death by her boyfriend, and still others believe it was a drug overdose. Whatever the circumstances of her untimely death, we honor her legacy to the Learn your Lesson canon with a screening of 3 of the 5 Afterschool Specials she co-starred in as well as trailers for her big screen work, including Little Darlings (courtesy of the Jenni Olson Queer Archive) and Pretty in Pink. In her first special, The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon (1976), Kenin plays Boots McAfee, a tough as nails bad-ass that terrorizes the titular Duffy Moon as he attempts to summon his courage to confront her. In Me and Dad's New Wife (1976), she helps Kristy McNichol and Lance Kerwin play a nasty trick on Kristy's stepmom and new homeroom teacher. In The Movie Star's Daughter (1979), she's the sassy editor of the school paper and the only one interested in the heroine for more than her father's fame. Come learn your lesson from the ballsiest child actress to grace the small and big screen and honor her legacy in an extra special evening.

Date: Thursday, September 10th, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Classic Cartoon Cavalcade, an evening of some of our very favorite classic cartoons hand-picked from the San Francisco Media Archive's massive collection. From the 1930s-1950s, from the silly to the sexy with a little Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies (including works by Robert Clampett, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones), UPA, Fleischer Brothers, Walt Di$ney and imitators, just to name a few with tons of new discoveries and Oddball Premieres. We've got a triple dose of that darn fool duck Daffy as he dreams of being "Duck Twacy, Famous Detective" and faces off against a hilarious den of supervillains in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946). He's scatting and zoot-suiting away with a living library (and a cameo by the sickly Frank Sinatra) in Book Revue (1946), and he teams up with Bugs to fend off a giant Elmer Fudd in Chuck Jones'Beanstalk Bunny (1955). UPA brings us three delightful shorts in their groundbreaking limited animation style: A dance class gone awry in Ballet Oop! (1954), toddler on father violence in Family Circus (1951) and everybody's favorite nearsighted curmudgeon Mr. Magoo goes looking for a dog but ends up collaring a thief in Magoo's Canine Mutiny (1956). Mi©key Mouse dreams of a life married to Minnie, and the dozens of baby mice that make his life hell in early Di$ney short Mi©key's Nightmare (1932). Betty Boop sings her way into the heart of her Prince Charming (with the help of a risque makeover from her fairy godmother) in Poor Cinderella (1934). Heckle and Jeckle must fight off some canine robbers at their diner "The Indigestion Inn" in Blue Plate Symphony (1954). W.C. Squeals is on skates to get some booze in Cracked Ice (1937). Wile E. Coyote dresses like Batman, jets off on a rocket pack and paints a fake road, but never does catch his dinner in Gee Whiz-z-z-z (1955). It's the day for the flower parade and one lowly cactus wants to win the day in Flowers for Madame (1935). Come early for more cartoon madness including the Goofy Gophers in Ham in a Role (1949), Foghorn Leghorn in Feather Dusted (1954) and a caricatured Hollywood shindig at Jack Benny's house Malibu Beach Party (1940).

Date: Friday, August 28th, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Color, 1946, Robert Clampett)

While reading his favorite comic book, Daffy Duck knocks himself unconscious and dreams that he’s “Duck Twacy, Famous Detective.” All the piggy banks in town have been plundered and Duck Twacy is on the case as he follows footprints, climbs walls and ceilings, peels off a footprint to look under it and has a tussle with Sherlock Holmes. Porky the Pig has a cameo (driving the trolley car that leads directly to the secret hideout), and Daffy has to deal with numerous and ridiculous evil villains from Neon Noodle to Hammerhead.

Ballet Oop! (Technicolor, 1954, Robert Cannon)
A charming mid-century UPA short produced by Stephen Bosustow and directed by Robert Cannon. Miss Placement, the tutor of the Hot Foot School of Ballet is told that she has only three weeks before the four new pupils have to perform at the local festival. After an exhausting training regimen, can the girls pull of the performance of their lives and bring fame and acclaim to Hot Foot and Miss Placement or will it end in disaster?

Book Revue (Color, 1946, Robert Clampett)
A library of books comes to life as told through site gags and literary puns as the book titles and the characters on the covers interact and have a jam session that includes another absurd caricature of sickly Frank Sinatra. Daffy is feeling left out, so he dons a zoot suit and joins the party. The wolf is after Little Red Riding Hood and Daffy tries to warn her in scat. The wolf is nabbed by The Long Arm of the Law and eventually burns in Dante’s Inferno.

Mi©key's Nightmare (B+W, 1932, Burt Gillett)

The world's favorite mouse in one of his early cartoons! Mi©key says his prayers and heads off to dreamland. He imagines marrying Minnie and that's when the nightmare begins! They pop out 20 or so little mousy tots who make Mi©key's life a living hell! Maybe that's why after 80+ years together this power couple never had any offspring!

Betty Boop in Poor Cinderella (B+W, 1934, Dave Fleischer)
A (sadly) black and white print of Betty Boop's only cartoon in color, never screened at Oddball! A delightfully imaginative musical version of the classic fairy tale includes a risque transformation of Cinderella, stripping her down to her skivvies before dressing her up for the ball.

Blue Plate Symphony (Color, 1954, Connie Rasinski)
The magpies, Heckle and Jeckle are running their diner: Indigestion Inn with a song and a bunch of unappetizing and interactive dishes. A couple of dog thieves are fixing to rob the joint, but the birds prove too smart (or insane) to go down without a fight and they use a whole pantry full of artillery to roust the mongrels from the joint before breaking into song again!

Magoo's Canine Mutiny (Color, 1956, Pete Burness)
Mr. Magoo wants a dog, so he heads over to the pet store to pick one out. While there, a thief in a fur coat attempts to rob the store, but Magoo - mistaking him for a furry pooch - collars him and heads for home. When the cops apprehend Magoo's new pet, he's got to go looking for a real dog, but ends up in a record store, attempting to adopt a statue of the RCA dog.

Cracked Ice (B+W, 1937, Frank Tashlin)

W.C. Squeals, a pig that looks and talks like W.C. Fields, tries to break into the Red Cross dog’s alcohol supply at a frozen pond. A drunken fish with a magnet on its belly causes the pig to win an ice skating contest through magnetic force (because he is wearing metal skates).

Flowers for Madame (Color, 1935, Friz Freleng)

It's the day for the flower pageant and all the anthropomorphic flowers and bugs are ready to party. The pageant begins with a parade being led by a grass hopper followed by turtles begins ridden by more garden bugs, and a line of beetles playing trumpet flowers like horns. There are floats pulled by worms and snails. Flowers dance on the floats, and the crowd of flower spectators applauds and cheers. A cactus decides to join in by planting super growing flower seeds which sprout and bloom in a matter of seconds, trellising over his windup truck to create a instant flower float. The judges are not impressed, Adding to the cactus’ chagrin, this truck explodes in a fury of gears and springs, and everyone laughs. In an unrelated story arch, someone has left a box of matches and magnifying glass unattended in the sun. The focused light ignites a match starting a fire which spreads to the pageant. Can the cactus redeem himself and save the day?

Family Circus (1951 B+W, Art Babbit)

Gloriously violent sibling rivalry from UPA and Jolly Frolics. Five-year-old Patsy has competition for her father's attention from the family's new baby daughter. She proceeds to wreak havoc all over the house and terrorizing the cat. Daddy slips on a roller-skate, knocking himself unconscious. In a dream sequence - filmed using limited animation in the style of children's drawings - he realizes he has been ignoring his oldest child. He awakens and takes her in his arms, but Baby, now the jealous one, kicks up a fuss.

Beanstalk Bunny (Technicolor, 1955, Chuck Jones)
Jack and the Beanstalk gets a Looney-makeover in this beloved Chuck Jones masterpiece. Daffy is back as Jack and after he tosses his magic beans into Bugs' rabbit hole, the two shoot up to Elmer the Giant's castle in the sky. The pair hide in snuff box, run on Elmer’s face, hide inside his head, jump out of his cigarette and more in an attempt to throw off the hungry giant, but will they succeed?

Gee Whiz-z-z-z (Color, 1955, Chuck Jones)
Coyote and Roadrunner are at it again and Acme has all the supplies to finally win that dog a meal! Wile E. paints a fake road, goes fishing with dynamite, rides on a jet pack and (most excitingly) dons a green Batman costume, all in the name of lunch.

For the Early Birds:

Ham In a Role (Color, 1949, Robert McKimson)
The Goofy Gophers are back and they've got their sights set on a Shakespearean-loving dog dramatist who thinks he's too good to be in cartoons.

Merrie Melodies: Feather Dusted (Color, 1954, Robert McKimson)

The widow hen (Prissie) and her bookworm son get the best of the over-outgoing Leghorn when he tries to teach the boy games. Foghorn tries to make the “panty waist" into a man by having him play sports games like croquet , cops and robbers, Indians, pirates, diving. The chick character with the glasses and pencil out smarts the know it all rooster until the granny scolds them both. The character of Foghorn Leghorn is based on Fred Allen's "Senator Claghorn," an inhabitant of his "Allen's Alley" played by Allen's announcer.

Malibu Beach Party (B+W, 1940, Friz Freleng)

Jack Benny and Mary Livingston (Benny) are having a party at their Malibu home. Guests include caricatures of Bob Hope, Bette Davis, Andy Devine, Kay Kaiser, Clark Gable, George Raft, Baby Snooks, James Cagney, Rochester, Phil Harris, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Mickey Rooney, Cary Grant, and many more.

Curator’s Biography

Kat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009. She has programmed over 150 shows at Oddball on everything from puberty primers to experimental animation.

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Oddball Films presents Altered Realities - Inside the Mind's Eye, a night of 16mm films from a variety of genres including animation, documentary and scare films that document and induce alternate states of consciousness. From past life hypnotherapy to a 60s LSD trip to the melting mind of a schizophrenic; this is one night that will have you out of your mind. Go under hypnosis and seek out your past lives with The Bloxham Tapes (1978). These actual recordings (and the re-imagined reenactments) of the hypnosis sessions of Arnall Bloxham reveal the kind of uncanny details that lend to the belief in reincarnation, or are they merely implanted memories in suggestive people. Delve into Le Monde Du Schizophrene (The World of the Schizophrenic, 1969) a super-surreal, Salvador Dali-like film produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceuticals (Makers of drugs as LSD). Head on the trip of your life in the Sid Davis drug scare film LSD:Trip or Trap? (1967) featuring a wild LSD party with disastrous results. See the fervor of faith that leads one Pentecostal congregation to speak in tongues and handle snakes in an excerpt of Peter Adair's Holy Ghost People (1967). Plus, two very different surreal and psychedelic animated shorts to hypnotize and draw you into your own trance state: Norman McLaren's lush and breathtaking A Phantasy (1952) and Vince Collins' insane kaleidoscope of mind-blowing imagery Fantasy (1967). Early birds can find out if they have ESP (or if that's even a thing at all) in the campy mini doc Psi: Boundaries of the Mind (1976).

Date: Thursday, August 27th, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

The Bloxham Tapes (Color, 1978)
A fascinating British documentary focusing on the tape recordings of eminent hypnotherapist Arnall Bloxham who, over the course of more than 20 years, has hypnotized 400 people, recording what appear to be uncannily detailed descriptions of previous lives. The film considers the question of whether or not the Bloxham tapes can be taken as proof of reincarnation or the possibility of the hoax of implanted memories. The film features real participants and re-imagined reenactments of the detailed stories that come out of their sessions.

Le Monde Du Schizophrene (The World of the Schizophrenic) (Color, 1969)

A surreal, Salvador Dali like film produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company (Makers of such drugs as LSD) in Switzerland. “The World of the Schizophrenic” portrays one afternoon in the life of a hunky schizophrenic as he wanders about his bedroom and strolls outside hallucinating to the sounds of a Harry Partch-like avant garde sound score. Truly hallucinogenic in it’s depiction of the Schizophrenic state.

LSD: Trip or Trap? (Color, 1967)
A Sid Davis classic that starts with a fatal crash, and then traces the tragic path that led a good boy to experiment with the latest thrill on the scene- LSD-25. Wild freak-out scenes and good kids pressured into drugs by misguided peers. Sid Davis was one of the founding fathers of the educational scare film, directing and producing hundreds; all for under $1000 a piece.

A Phantasy(Color, 1952)

Cut-out animation by Norman McLaren, and music for saxophones and synthetic sound by Maurice Blackburn. In a dream-like, meditative and surreal landscape drawn in pastel, inanimate objects come to life to disport themselves in grave dances and playful ritual.

Holy Ghost People (B&W, 1967 - excerpt)

This film is a documentary of a Caucasian Pentecostal congregation whose fundamentalist philosophy encourages a literal interpretation of the Bible. Reveals the religious fervor, the trances, the phenomenon of glossolalia (speaking in new tongues), and the use of rattlesnakes. Filmed by Peter Adair. This film was rightly hailed by Margaret Mead as one of the best ethnographic films ever made, and a staple of classes on anthropology and documentary film, this study of a little-known sect who put their lives on the line for their religion still packs a wallop four decades after its release.

Fantasy (Color, 1976)

A hallucinatory handmade film from San Francisco animation legend Vince Collins evokes his particular brand of surrealist psychedelia.

For the Early Birds:

Psi: Boundaries of the Mind (Color, 1976)

This fairly campy mini doc explores the possibilities of a sixth sense through cheesy reenactments, interviews with proponents and critics, and actual footage of ESP experiments. Watch as they blindfold and wire up a woman to test her perceptibility.

Oddball Films presents What the F(ilm)?! 13: Cine-Insanity from the Archive, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This compendium of 16mm madness is too strange to be believed and too baffling to be forgotten. This time around, we've got furry orange aliens, animated tuberculosis germs, circus chimps, sexy frogs, Smokey the Bear as a baby, deep fried delights, donkey baseball and more! Meet Trogmoffy, an orange fuzzy alien from Saturn who has come to Earth to learn proper grammar in the terrifying children's primer The Adventures of Trogmoffy: Rescue on a Strange Planet (1971). Noir and B-movie legend Edgar G. Ulmer brings us a tale of tuberculosis for the kiddies with an animated TB bug in Goodbye Mr. Germ (1940). Baby nudity and cannibal cooks make Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen (1975) one of the most bizarre and beloved children's tales of all time. Zippy the Chimp hits the big top in Small Fry Circus (1956). San Francisco's own radical sexual-awareness ministry the Multi-Media Resource Centers brings us bean bag frogs getting it on in a variety of human sexual positions to the music of Serge Gainsbourg in The Love Toad (1970). Learn all about the deliciously greasy world of Deep Fat Frying (1969). Hopalong Cassidy gives us an adorable peak at the birth of a conservationist icon in Little Smokey: the True Story of America’s Forest Fightin’ Bear (1952). For a mid-century musical break, hit the beach with Aileen Shirley and her all girl big band the Minoco Maids of Melody as they jazz up the shore in their bathing suits in the sexy soundie Jump Fever (1942). For more musical mayhem, we head to Canada for the eye-popping and surreal animated trip that is Brad Caslor's Get a Job (1985). Plus, a double helping of insane newsreels: the boxing bears, playful dolphins and donkey baseball players in Sports Zanies (1940s) and the ridiculous "inventions" for the overly gullible in Fraud by Mail (1944). Plus more surprises in store!

Date: Friday, September 4th, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Highlights Include:

Adventures of Trogmoffy: Rescue on a Strange Planet (Color, 1971)
The furry stuff of nightmares! Timmy and Margaret are just two kids out for a stroll in the woods when they come across something that would make most people scream, a giant orange fuzzy alien from Saturn named Trogmoffy. Instead of peeing their pants and running back home to tell the Weekly World News, Timmy and Margaret help the disgusting creature learn proper English grammar.

Goodbye, Mr Germ (B+W, 1940 Edgar G. Ulmer)
A mixed animation/live-action TB scare film from legendary directed Edgar Ulmer. This antiquated campfest features actor (and sometime director) James Kirkland, this short film apparently predates the TB vaccine, or at least its widespread use. Kirkland is the doctor (or scientist) father of two youngsters. His lab consists of various different animals and pets. He imagines inventing a radio that can hear germs speak, and that he can understand their language. Most of the film features Kirkland talking to a animated tuberculosis germ (he views through his microscope) as they discuss how TB is transfered from one person to another, how the body fights it, and how it can live dormant for years in a person's body waiting for a moment of physical weakness that allows it to escape. TB causes one to cough until eventually it ruptures blood vessels such that the discharge contains blood. Kirkland then tells the germ that they've been able to discover "him" in the body now, which is then verified with an X-ray.

In the Night Kitchen (Gene Dietch, Color, 1975)

With its comic book format and flash of baby nudity, Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen was groundbreaking (and censored!) upon its 1970 publication. But making a wild rumpus in the picture book aisle was always the Sendak way: from the moody Where the Wild Things Are to his adaptation of the children’s holocaust opera Brundibar. Our hero Mickey tumbles into the pantry metropolis of the night kitchen, where after hours baking is overseen by a trio of Oliver Hardy look-a-likes, who pop him in the oven. Freely referencing Windsor McKay’s Little Nemo, Sendak enhanced his standing as cool uncle to generations of kids. Angelo Michajlov's Kitchen Sink-o-Pators provide the appropriately swinging score.

Small Fry Circus (B+W, 1956)

Zippy the anthropomorphic, clothes-wearing chimp is back and he's ready to help out the kids who have gathered together to put on a circus. With Zippy as the main attraction, it's sure to be a hit!

The Love Toad (1970, Color, Greg Von Buchau)

Deep Fat Frying (Color, 1969)
Discover the wonderful world of deep fat fried foods. Our narrator takes us on a tour through the back rooms of all those grease-soaked restaurants that chef up nothing but pure, unadulterated fried goodness. Learn how the pros do it with proper fat maintenance, food preparation, and cooking guidelines to keep that fat hot and the food sizzling. Step back in time to your pimpled, minimum wage days with the folks in ‘Deep Fat Frying’ mmmm, greasy!

Sports Zanies (B+W, 1940s)
Catch all the craziness from the wide world of sports in this wacky newsreel. A man fights a bear in a boxing ring! A man walks backwards (imagine that)! A woman is pulled through the water by a dolphin! And who could forget donkey baseball!

Little Smokey: the True Story of America’s Forest Fightin’ Bear (B+W, 1952)
In 1944 the Wartime Advertising Council decided to use an animal to carry the fire prevention message. On August 9, 1944 a bear was chosen to be the spokesman for forest fire prevention. This quirky tale, told by silver screen legend Hopalong Cassidy tells the story of Smokey the Bear, (the only animal ever to have it’s own zip code!) from cub in the woods to the Washington Zoo and the Forestry Service campaign.

Jump Fever- Aileen Shirley and her Minoco Maids of Melody (B+W, 1942)

A sassy and sexy all-girl Soundie beach party. This musical short opens with newspaper headline superimposed overa swingin' beach scene: “Hot tunes of hot girl band cooled only by ocean breezes.” When Aileen and her gals begin to play (in their swimsuits!), the people crowd around to hear. A dirty old man in a “beach comber” shirt is too short to see so he pulls out a measuring tape and measures the thigh of the girl in front of him, giving a leering look. Dancers balance on top of huge beach balls and the beach comber crawls under the chairs of women in the band and gets his comeuppance when he is kicked in the head.

Get A Job! (Color, 1985)

This animated film that was written, directed, and animated by Brad Caslor presents all the frustrations, anxieties, and absurd hurdles of the job hunt in a funny and entertaining story. A cartoon dog gets booted out of one job interview after another, always being nagged by a group of grotesque looking singing pigs and heckled by a posse of singing bum animals. Finally, after a nightmarish trip through yet another series of interviews, the dog lands himself a job. Great music mixed with great, colorful animation, make this yet another gem from the National Film Board of Canada that is not to be missed!

Fraud By Mail (B+W, 1944)
Meet ‘Joe Gullible’ and his cohort of dim-bulbed dummies in this Universal Studios short about bogus mail order products. Which is funnier, the devices themselves (like the nose shaper and height booster) or the idiots who bought them. With a satirical narration by Joe Costello, this film sure does point out the fools among us.

Curator’s Biography

Oddball Films presents Beyond Reason - Dada and Surrealist Cinema, an evening of nonsensical experimental film from Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, Rene Clair and more all screened from 16mm prints from Oddball's massive archive. Realism is overrated and this program explores the magnitude of creative expression when freed from the constraints of rational and linear structures. Helmut Herbst’s An Alphabet of German DADAism (1968) is a mind-bending and comprehensive A-Z examination of dadaists shot in true dadaist style with the cooperation of Hans Richter and Richard Hulsenbeck, featuring sound-artist Kurt Schwitters, satirist George Groz, Max Ernst and more. Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s stunning Anemic Cinema (1926) is a visual cacophony of hypnotic puns. Rene Clair's Entr'acte (1924) disrupts all sense of reason through seemingly random juxtapositions that defy convention and construct new associations with familiar events and objects. Don't miss one of the seminal works of surrealist cinema: the legendary eyeball-slitting surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou (1928) by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. Plus! The Salvador Dali-inspired cartoon Dough For the Do-Do (1949), a tribute to surrealism starring Porky Pig. Early arrivals will be treated to Richter on Film (1972) - a conversation with the founding father of Dadaism with excerpts of his films from the 1920s. So come down to Oddball for a bunch of beautiful nonsense!

Date: Thursday, September 3rd, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:Germany-DADA: An Alphabet of German DADAism (Color and B+W, 1968)

Produced and directed by Helmut Herbst.

In post-World War I Zurich, out of the conflict's sobering aftermath, there was born an artistic movement that preached an anti-establishment, anarchistic, baffling, radical-yet-whimsical philosophy of creativity. Ridiculing traditional ideas of form and beauty in the accepted arts, random and meaningless by definition, calculatedly irrational by design, the movement spread like revolt to America and across Europe, voicing the delightfully bizarre protest of a brave new community of artists and writers. Featuring painter and sound artists like Kurt Schwitters, satirist George Groz, Hans Arp, Max Ernst and many, many influential figures in the movement. Filmed with the cooperation of original Dadaists Hans Richter and Richard Hulsenbeck, this unique motion picture collage of art, music and poetry is not only an alphabet of German Dadaism, but is in itself, a true Dadaist experience.

Anemic Cinema (1926, B+W, Silent)

Directed by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray

“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”

-Marcel Duchamp

The only film to come from the founder of the Dadaism movement (artistic and literary movement from 1916-1923 “Anemic Cinema” is an abstract and annalistic film short containing rotating circles and spirals interlaced with spinning discs of words strung together in elaborate nonsensical French puns.

"Duchamp used the initial payment on his inheritance to make a film and to go into the art business. The film, shot in Man Ray's studio with the help of cinematographer Marc Allégret, was a seven-minute animation of nine punning phrases by his alter ego Rrose Sélavy. These had been pasted, letter by letter, in a spiral pattern on round black discs that were then glued to phonograph records; the slowly revolving texts alternate with shots of Duchamp's Discs Bearing Spirals, ten abstract designs whose turning makes them appear to move backward and forward in an erotic rhythm. The little film, which Duchamp called Anemic Cinema, had its premiere that August at a private screening room in Paris." -Calvin Tomkins

Entr’acte (B+W, 1924)
This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between two acts of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, at the Théâtre des Champs- Elysées in Paris in 1924. Entr’acte is a surrealistic concoction of unrelated images, reflecting Clair’s interest in Dada, a radical art form relying on experimentation and surreal expressionism. Clair’s imagery is both captivating and disturbing, giving life to inanimate objects (most notably the rifle range dummies), whilst attacking conventions, even the sobriety of a funeral march. The surrealist photographer Man Ray also puts in an appearance, in a film which curiously resembles his own experimental films of this era.

Un Chien Andalou (“The Andalusian Dog”, B+W, 1928)

Made in France by the brilliant Spanish director Luis Buñuel and the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. Un Chien Andalou is one of the best-known surrealist films of the avant-garde movement of the 1920s. It uses dream logic that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes that attempt to shock the viewer's inner psyche. Its opening scene is one of the most famous in cinema history.

Dough for the Do-Do (Technicolor, 1949)

This Merrie Melodies short is a stunning animated tribute (and satire) to surrealism. In a background reminiscent of Salvador Dali and Krazy Kat, Porky Pig hunts a "Do-Do Bird" in "Darkest Africa," where he encounters strange creatures and landscape in "Wackyland." The strangest of all is the "last do-do," who turns out not to be the last at all. Directed by Bob Clampett and Friz Feleng with music by the great Carl Stalling and the voice of Mel Blanc.

For the Early Birds:

Richter on Film (Color, 1972)

The brilliant painter, Dadaist and abstract/avant garde filmmaker Hans Richter talks about his experimental films of the 1920's. Excerpts from Rhythm 2 (1921),Race Symphony (1928), and Ghosts Before Breakfast(1927) are included. Richter moved from Switzerland to the United States in 1940 and taught in the Institute of Film Techniques at the City College of New York.

While living in New York, Richter directed two feature films, Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947) and 8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957) in collaboration with Max Ernst, Jean Cocteau, Paul Bowles, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, and others. In 1957, he finished a film entitled Dadascope with original poems and prose spoken by their creators: Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Kurt Schwitters. Richter was also the author of a first-hand account of the Dada movement titled Dada: Art and Anti-Art which also included his reflections on the emerging Neo-Dada artworks.

Oddball Films presents Orphan Offerings: Refugee Reels from the 3TON Treasure Chest, a unique program of various notable non-theatrical shorts, all on 16MM, this time selected from the stacks of 3TON Cinema’s DIY “film orphanage” in Oakland! Guest Curator Montgomery Cantsin returns to unravel a hidden history of so-called non-theatrical film—one which bursts at the seams with beautiful bastards, expired gems, quiet masterpieces and more. This evening’s reels, hand picked and wrangled by 3TON’s co-founder, runs the gamut: from fun to factual, animation to ethnographic, and from 1903 to 2014. Expect a potpourri of A/V delights and ‘other’ cinemas! Highlights include: Dragonfold and Other Ways to Fill Space (1979), an early computer animation by Bruce and Katharine Cornwell; Birth of a Mountain(1977), Bert Van Bork’s classic Kilauea eruption documentation; Piece for Grate (1975), a brief and hypnotic music film; Perilous Paradise(1950), a trip to Zambo Island; Free Fall(1964), Arthur Lipsett’s hallucinogenic tour de force;Bear Facts(1944), a cartoon featuring Kiko the Kangaroo; and Memo (2014), Cantsin’s own recent “de-instructional” experiment. Plus: newsreels, doodles, mutoscopes & more. Arrive early for hand-altered bits, clowns, and a rare Frank Sinatra reel!

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Date: Friday, September 11th, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Highlights Include:

Dragonfold and Other Ways to Fill Space(Color, 1979)

Various geometric phenomena (the Sierpinski curve, tessellation)are illustrated on-screen in this computer-animated educational film. The makers, Bruce and Katharine Cornwell of Brooklyn, NY, were a prolific pair (R.I.P.) who produced many other charming works such as “Journey to the Center of a Triangle.”

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Hot Takes

Birth of a Mountain (Color, 1977)

The lava light show expertly documented here (by Burt Van Bork for Encyclopedia Britannica) represents a drop in the bucket, considering that the Kilauea Volcano has now been erupting on a continuous basis since 1983! However, at the time of filming, this volcano’s activities were quite impressive, setting a new Hawaiian record for duration and adding 230 acres to the Island.

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Gratest Hit

Piece for Grate… (B+W, 1975)

This wonderful short abstract musical piece (“…for grate, two balloons, and strings”), perhaps never before shown in California, was the work of an artist in Oregon named David Joyce. In it, the quotidian becomes unfamiliar, as intricate shadowy patterns flash onto the screen accompanied by experimental sounds.

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Dances With Swords

Perilous Paradise(B+W, 1950)

Here’s a glimpse at the local customs of an island in the southern Philippines. The usual racist undertones of the period are present here in the narrator’s assumptions and remarks, of course. …But this well-shot and whimsical travelogue is none the less something we should look at closely.

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Bottomless Cut

Free Fall (B+W, 1964)

The poetic masterpiece of a troubled Seer! Free Fall features dazzling pixilation, in-camera superimpositions, percussive tribal music, syncopated rhythms and ironic juxtapositions. Using a brisk “single-framing” technique, Arthur Lipsett attempts to create a synesthetic experience through the intensification of image and sound. Citing the film theorist Sigfreud Kracauer, Lipsett writes,“Throughout this psychophysical reality, inner and outer events intermingle and fuse with each other – 'I cannot tell whether I am seeing or hearing – I feel taste, and smell sound – it's all one – I myself am the tone.'”

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Cuddly Caniforms!

Bear Facts(B+W, 1944)

Kiko the Kangaroo’s polyfunctional tail comes in handy again, this time as he enjoys a romp in the woods with a pack of little bears. (…We have here the 1944 Castle Films re-issue of the1936 Terrytoons production originally called “Kiko and the Honeybears.”)

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To Whom It May Concern

Memo (Color and B+W, 2014)

A discrepant, insolent, uncreative film--cobbled together from available, useless fragments--wherein means of conditioning and modes of perception go temporarily up for grabs. A quick brain-scrambling palate-cleanser, with a subliminal cameo appearance by Woody Woodpecker!

About the Curator/Archivist

Montgomery Cantsin is an artist/curator/filmmaker born in Illinois in 1979 who has worked as a Research Assistant for award-winning found-footage film-artists such as Craig Baldwin and Bill Morrison. Cantsin has curated moving images for the Olympia Film Festival, online at Network Awesome, and elsewhere. He's worked as a film projectionist at venues such as YBCA and Union Docs. His writings have appeared in Cineaste Magazine as well as online at Furtherfield. 3TON Cinema (http://3toncinema.info) is a roving microcinema with a collection of roughly 1000 ephemeral titles from the 20th Century.

Oddball Films welcomes media maker Tommy Becker to our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Becker will be presenting Passing Periods- Reflections Through a Classroom Window, an expanded cinema performance that explores and celebrates the dynamics of the high school landscape and complexities of relations in the cultural construct of the classroom and beyond. Within the program, the role of color in art history, the vitality of lemons as educational inquiry and the ebb and flow of our interpersonal lives is viewed through PowerPoint and celebrated in song. This 80-minute performance revolves around eight music-based essays that combine live vocals with projected video and pre-recorded sound. Specific vocabulary and content related to the essays are introduced through short PowerPoint presentations that add an artistic dimension of learning to the program.

Date: Thursday, September 24th, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Passing Periods - Reflections Through a Classroom Window | Video List

video & music: written, recorded, performed & edited by Tommy Becker unless otherwise noted

Song for Hellos and Goodbyes | 4min 30sec | DV | 2013 (intro sample from, “That Junior Miss Spirit” 1970)

This short video poem is dedicated to the fleeting relationships that so often percolate through contemporary life. Song for Hellos and Goodbyes leads viewers through the birth and death of a romantic relationship using the cliché lines of purchased gift cards. Within the script, a second voice emerges to reveal a more authentic picture as the relationship blossoms, sours and disappears.

Song for the Pain-body | 7min 30sec | DV | 2014 (intro music, “The Lonely Man” by Joe Harnell)

The term, “pain-body” was coined by philosopher and author Eckhart Tolle. Tolle asserts your ego

is not who you are, it is not your essence. Your ego is a construct. This false identity of the ego is often fueled by what Tolle calls the pain-body. The pain-body is the collective manifestation of all the pain, misery, and sorrow a person has ever experienced in their life.

Song for Primary Colors | 8min 30sec | DV | 2013

This work is about the death of color in contemporary art and my attempts as a teacher to resurrect its power in the classroom. The video pays tribute to three modern artists, Picasso, Rothko and van Gough, each of whom is renowned for engaging a particular hue during their lives.

Song for Awe & Dread | 10min | 2015 (intro music, reversed - “Stairway to Heaven” by Led

Zeppelin)

Song for Awe & Dread is a contemporary take on the vanitas paintings of the 17th century and an investigation into the emotional duality of our existence. It is AWEsome to be human and to be alive, but the evolution of human intelligence has also burdened our species with a self-awareness of life’s impermanence. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called these two uniquely human emotions, awe and dread.

Song for Disobedient Youth | 4min 30sec | DV | 2008 (intro sample, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper)

It's a natural response for teenagers to question and react against their cultural conditioning. Song for Disobedient Youth is an exhortation to embrace unfettered joy and chaos before the agonies of adulthood set in. It invites the viewer to momentarily indulge in the fantasy of youthful rebellion, self-discovery, recklessness, love, disregard, dream and contempt that continues to escape us as we are pulled further into the constructs of age and culture.

Song for the Lemons | 5min 30sec | DV | 2013 (intro sample, “The Lemon Song” by Led

Zeppelin)

The lemon, often utilized by famed still life painters was rarely the focus of a composition. More typically, this citrus was abused for its compositional qualities. Its ovoid form of highly saturated yellow was used to balance the more dominant piling of apples, oranges and pears. The lemon, I felt, never got its day in the sun.

Song for Failed Connections / Bobby XP1 | 5min 40sec | DV | 2012

Bobby XP1 was invented as a roaming, remotely operated, social media platform during the dot com boom of the late 1990s. This video documents its beta test in a neighborhood of San Francisco. After failing to connect, Bobby returns home to the melancholy serenade of his creator and one true friend.

Song for a Love Song | 5min 20sec | DV | 2014

About Tommy Becker:

A poet trapped in a camcorder, Becker continues to feed video poems into his never-ending saga, “TAPE NUMBER ONE”. TNO blends the artist's poetics, songwriting, performance, costuming, with found footage and in computer design. Each track is presented as a song dedication, the videos run song-length, never more then a few minutes. Often, Becker’s work is translated into live spoken word/video performances. Locally, he has participated in the Bay Area Now Show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and as a resident at Headlands Center for the Arts. His video work has been screened both nationally and internationally with recent presentations at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles; Sydney Underground Film Festival, Sydney, Australia and Antimatter Media Arts Festival, Victoria, BC.

About Oddball Films:

Oddball Films has the rare opportunity to present the seventh annual installment in the innovative interview-based series MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) featuring the first lady of the Beat Generation: poet, playwright and artist ruth weiss. Los Angeles media artist and curator Gerry Fialka will interview weiss in person on the Oddball Cine Stage. This event is a MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon), an engaging interview by Gerry Fialka with modern thinkers who will address the metaphysics of their callings and the nitty-gritty of their crafts. In addition to this unique and occasionally whimsical conversation, we will be screening weiss' rare cinematic film poem The Brink (1960) photographed by painter Paul Beattie. ruth weiss was one of the pre-eminent women of the largely male Beat Generation. A performer as well as a poet, weiss often combined live jazz music with her poetry. Come rediscover a local living legend and peak inside the feminine mind of Beat poetry.

Date: Friday, September 18th, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

ruth weiss (born 1928) is a German-born poet, performer, playwright and artist who made her home and career in the US, as a member of the Beat Generation, a label she has recently embraced and that is used frequently by historians detailing her life and works. weiss spells her name in lowercase as such as a symbolic protest against "law and order," since in her birthplace of Germany all nouns are spelled capitalized. She is often credited as the originator of combining live poetry with live jazz music.

The Brink (1961, 40 minutes)
Based on a poem by ruth weiss, this intriguing and lyrical film was called by Stan Brakhage "one of the most important San Francisco films of the period." A playful love story about two lonely people that was breathtakingly photographed by painter Paul Beattie.

"The Brink, by ruth weiss, is a cinematic poem that plunges into shadow and enchantments in nature, chronicling mythic dimensions, poetic imagination, and the disorientation of sequence. The 40 minute film was shot traversing the seaside and city of San Francisco, in 1961. With intensity but not precision, similar to a dream, The Brink presents a tangle of shadow and illumination where meaning is deferred to changing moments, and the chimerical arises only to collapse. ruth weiss' wayward narrative gives confidence in the carnage of the simulacrum. ruth's voice interlaces the images: "She's somewhere else, she can't corner you there...give my love to the game though I can't belong....I'm obsessed with the past and no one remembers beyond" alongside lines that include phantoms, the water, ancient tension, the awkward end, the magic hat, the ageless and shapeless, and many things continually beyond." - Kari Adelaide

"Gerry Fialka asks unexpected Questions about important Ideas, eliciting Answers that can surprise even those doing the answering. My Interview with him taught me something about myself; it was a Gift." - David Gatten

"Great interviewing requires a stimulating interviewer and Gerry Fialka is certainly that. Best part is that he makes the rare act of deep thinking in public before an audience flow as creatively and easily as a Basquiat painting." - Jay Levin, LA Weekly founder and former editor-in-chief

"Fialka's cool questions are right at the heart of all my work. By far the best interview I have ever been treated to." - Ondi Timoner, only two time Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury winner

"My experience in Gerry Fialka's MESS series was a scintillating discussion of history, culture, philosophy, sociology and the creative process. His questions and ideas transcend the accepted, traditional limitations of 'the interview.'" - Brad Schreiber, author, producer, screenwriter, journalist

"Fialka's interview with me was an invigorating, pleasurable, philosophical, specific, awakening journey." - Harry Northup, actor and poet

http://www.laughtears.com/mess.html and http://www.laughtears.com/

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Cartoons go to War: Animated Propaganda from WWII, a night of outlandish, hilarious and didactic cartoons from the 1940s (and a couple from the 1930s) calling for a patriotic spirit, heralding the soldiers, shilling war bonds and warning against the scourges of malaria and The Axis Powers. During World War II, cartoons changed to reflect the times, both heralding and roasting the war effort, doing their part to grease the American propaganda machine, demonizing the enemy and guilting viewers into patriotism, or simply just adding a bit of humor into an otherwise trying era. Porky Pig reveals all America's goofiest secrets when he presents a faux-propaganda satire in Meet John Doughboy (1941). Humor meets education in the US Army’s propaganda short Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (1944) written by Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel which shows Snafu (Situation Normal All F*cked Up) learning the hard way about the consequences of not protecting himself from malaria infection. Mosquitoes go to boot camp in the hilarious send up of War-time newsreels in Of Thee I Sting (1946). Di$ney got into the war effort in a number of films from a variety of perspectives. In The Spirit of '43 (1943), Don@ld Duck is guilt tripped into filing his taxes (to defeat The Axis!); while in The Grain that Built a Hemisphere (1943), Di$ney touts the miracle properties of that native grain: corn; and in allegorical fashion, Chicken Little (1943) warns of falling for sweet-talking foxes reading from Mein Kampf. From Friz Freleng comes a similar allegory: Fifth Column Mouse (1943) only with a freewheeling community of mice that become slaves to a hungry cat until they stand up and fight back with a mechanical bulldog. Bugs Bunny gets in the patriotic spirit when he attempts to thwart a tiny gremlin hell-bent on detonating bombs at a US air base, in Falling Hare (1943). The puppetoons take to the skies in George Pal's Sky Pirates (1938). Funny pages favorites Nancy and Sluggo help raise money for war bonds in Nancy and Sluggo Doin' Their Part (1944). One World Or None (1946) is a postwar film warning against the new threat of total global nuclear annihilation. Plus, an early version of Porky Pig in Boom Boom (1936), Woody Woodpecker flies a PU-2 bomber (get it? PU?) in Ace in the Hole (1942) and more surprises for the early birds!

Date: Thursday, September 17th, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

The Spirit of '43 (B+W, 1943)
Don@ld Duck is here to tell everyone to file their taxes ("Taxes to defeat the axis!") in this didactic propaganda piece from Di$ney. Donald has just gotten his paycheck and he's got an angel and a devil trying to tell him how to spend his money. The angel, a kilt-wearing Scotsman that may or may not be Scrooge McDuck, urges Donald to file his taxes and give his money to helping the war effort. The devil - a zoot-suiter - wants Donald to have a good time with his cash. When the devil turns out to be a Nazi covered in swastikas, Donald's right on his way to his accountant!

Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (B+W, 1944, Chuck Jones)

Keep those pants up, Private Snafu! A cunning mosquito is loaded with malaria and he’s eying your USDA choice rump! The witty Private Snafu series was designed to convey vital information to servicemen who had wildly varying levels of education and literacy skills. Made by the folks who brought you Looney Tunes, this one was written by Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss!

Looney Tunes: Meet John Doughboy (B+W, 1941, Robert Clampett)

America's Defense Effort is caricatured in this phony newsreel introduced by Porky Pig. Full of goofy site-gags and jokes about the draft, the mess hall and the clucking machine gun nests, this isn't quite propaganda as much as satire. Jack Benny and Rochester are a secret weapon in an uncomfortably racist moment in an otherwise tame and hilarious cartoon.

Falling Hare (Color, 1943, Robert Clampett)

That rascally wabbit finally gets what's coming to him when he goes from tormenter to tormented by a tiny little gremlin who is out to ruin the war effort. A tiny little monster is out to detonate a bomb in an army airbase, and it's up to Bugs to stop him.

Of Thee I Sting (Color, 1946, Friz Freleng)

Movietone-style spoof narration is used in this tale of one man’s desperate stand against all odds. Mosquitoes go through an intense and very specific boot camp in this entertaining documentary send up of war effort newsreels of the day. Looney Tunes fans will thrill to Robert C. Bruce’s jaunty March of Time style narration.

Fifth Column Mouse (Color, 1943, Friz Freleng)
An allegory for the axis powers; this cartoon pits a hungry cat against a group of rodents. The cat tricks one of the mice that he is there to protect them as long as they appease him and serve him like a King. When his true colors are shown, the mice storm onto the battlefront in a mechanical bulldog to even the score.

Chicken Little (Color, 1943)
Another allegory for the Nazis' rise to power, this twisted fable features Foxy Loxy utilizing Hitler's own philosophies of mind control to fetch himself a feast of fowl. Originally, Foxy got his ideas from "Mein Kampf", but the studio switched the title of the book (but not the content) to read "Psychology".

The Grain That Built a Hemisphere (Color, 1943)

A different kind of propaganda short from Di$ney, this mini-doc on the importance of corn was made in conjunction with Canadian government. Tracing its roots from the communities of indigenous Americans to the insidious bi-product that invades almost every aspect of our daily lives, this short ends with a blitz of corn patriotism!

One World or None (B+W, 1946)

An animated warning against the threat of nuclear annihilation, featuring a stern and foreboding narrator. Watch as San Francisco becomes a giant skull surrounded by the graves of our imaginary fallen. This didactic piece of propaganda is pretty rich considering we're the only country that has ever dropped an atomic bomb on another country.

Nancy and Sluggo Doin’ Their Part (B+W, 1940s)

Our favorites from the funnies get down to the serious business of raising funds for the USO. Sluggo comes up with a suitably money-making schemes of all and all the gang joins in!

Sky Pirates (B+W, 1938, George Pal)
The Puppetoons take to the skies when a marauding band of air pirates begin dropping bombs. An air battle ensues and the military must make the skies safe again. Quirky and visually stunning, this short features Pal's hand-carved wooden puppets and some great aerial imagery and sight gags. Made for Horlicks malted milk in Britain.

Boom Boom (B+W, 1936 Jack King)

A very early Porky Pig is a World War I doughboy along with Beans the Cat. Animals sing "You're in the Army Now" to a frightened Porky who wishes he were back home on the farm. Porky and another soldier rescue General Hardtack from the enemy and fly him through enemy lines.

Ace in the Hole (1942, Alex Lovy)

Woody Woodpecker is at a military base and wants to fly an airplane. After reading a textbook he pilots a PU-2. Large bulldog acts as antagonist.

Curator’s Biography

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 92, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 films, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 92nd program of classic, strange, and unusual films. For Strange Sinema 92: Too Cool, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has curated a super-cool collection of teenage shorts that scream out COOL. These films, drawn from diverse genres such as mental hygiene, promotional, independent shorts, cartoons and documentaries examine the teenage lifestyle from the 1940s through 1970s touching everything from teen sex to shoplifting. These films are remarkable in their style, scope and cinematography. The program includes George Kaczender’s cool 1966 gem The Game, featuring mod rocking teens fumbling for play, Skater Dater (1965), the cult skateboarding/coming of age film made by Noel Black and featuring music by Davie Allen and the Arrows, United Airlines New York City(1968) a fast-paced NYC promo film featuring garage rockers The Churls, Turned On (1969), turned on kids at the beach with fast cars, heavy surf and a wild “Wipe-out” soundscore, The Day That Sang and Cried (1968), Dale Smallin’s (The Surfaris) groovy look at the inner life of a SoCal teen, Caught in a Rip-Off (1972) one of the best social guidance films ever made and proof that shoplifting will ruin your life!, Dating Do’s and Don’ts (1949), one of the campiest dating films ever (and a Oddball favorite), and finally, famed animator Chuck Jones unleashes his Lothario-skunk, Pepe Le Pew (and Penelope Pussycat), in the Oscar-winning cartoon For Scent-imental Reasons (1949).

Date: Friday, September 25th, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

The Game (Dir. George Kaczender, B+W, 1966)
This great, lost coming-of-age story filmed in Montreal in 1965 is the very definition of cool- sort of a short , artier Quadrophenia (though no Sting sightings). They're high school punks - they play rock music on the beach and in the garage. They stay up late and have sex in cars. They pick on each other and talk about girls. The super cool garage music written and performed for the film- a must see!! Director Kaczender went on to direct In Praise of Older Women with Tom Berenger and Karen Black (but don’t hold it against him).

Skater Dater (Dir. Noel Black, Color, 1965)

Directed by Noel Black (who went on to direct the cult feature Pretty Poison), Skater Dater has developed a strong following both for it’s amazing skateboarding and it’s surf-inspired Davie Allen and the Arrows soundtrack. Skaterdater has your proverbial summer fun all sewn up; sidewalk surfing action, blue Southern California sky, matching racing stripe jackets, blondes on Schwinn Sting-Rays, white jeans, first love, a boss surf rock soundtrack and a downhill finale. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1966 and nominated for an Academy Award, this no-dialogue short comes off like a SoCal Quadrophenia, as the young protagonist falls for a cutie and struggles to break away from the crowd. Features riders from the Imperial Skateboarding Club out of Torrance, CA.

Lonely Boy (B+W, 1962)

Roman Kroiter’s pioneering cinéma vérité portrait of teen idol Paul Anka, Lonely Boy captures all the hysteria and hyperbole in a pre-Beatles pop frenzy. Screaming, swooning teens, sleazy managers and all the minutia of a pop idol on tour- all utilizing the “direct cinema” technique utilized to great effect in D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back. Of course, Paul Anka is no Bob Dylan, but that does not stop Anka’s manager from proclaiming him on camera “the most important artist since Shakespeare” (with all sincerity). This is brilliant, fascinating filmmaking with an air of the tragic (given Anka’s subsequent career trajectory). An inspiration for Privilege, Peter Watkins’s 1967 rock and roll dystopia flick, Lonely Boy has retained much of its audacious power. In French and English

Dating Do’s and Don’ts (Color, 1949)

Long recognized as one of the campiest educational films ever made, this fun how-do guide follows clueless Woody’s quest to ask fun girl Ann (pronounced here as “Ay-yun”) out on a date. The narrator guides him through choosing a girl, how to ask her out, and proper etiquette at the Hi-Teen carnival. There’s a lot to be learned in this short film, namely, you don’t need to send flowers unless it’s a ritzy occasion, and never kiss on a first date!

New York City! (Color, 1968)
Straight boy meets straight girl in this “Fly the Friendly Skies of United” promo. Our “swingin’ squares” discover the sights and sounds of the Big Apple as they tour the touristy Times Square hot spots. Later they hit a belly dance lounge and end up at the famed club Salvation featuring the 60s garage rock band “The Churls” (with psychedelic backdrops). The evening ends with our two lovebirds heading home on motorbike-to mom!

For Scent-imental Reasons(B&W, 1949)

“It is love at first sight, is it not?” asks Pepe Le Pew of his tortured love object in this early entry in the beloved Merrie Melodies cartoon series. The distraught Penelope Pussycat flees Pepe’s unabashed advances until a change of heart turns the tables on our odorous friend. Oddball’s print of the film includes an often-censored sequence of Pepe threatening suicide! With the iconic voice work of Mel Blanc, the cartoon won legendary animator Chuck Jones his first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

The Day That Sang and Cried (1968, Color) 
Thanks to Albert Steg from Zampano’s Playhouse in Boston for turning us on to this film. Produced by Dale Smallin for Centron this film uses slow motion photography, flash-backs, and 1960s rock music to portray a day in the life of a teen-aged boy. Reveals the boy's thoughts and conveys his search for identity. Smallin was also producer of what would become one of the worlds best known surf bands - The Surfaris. It was Dale who arranged to record the band's first single Wipe Out/Surfer Joe and release on his small independent label DFS Records. Dale continued to make short educational and industrial films into the 70's. As Mr Steg says in his notes to last years “Depraved Youth “ program this film ”portrays a groovier, more sympathetic late-60s approach that attempted to reveal the inner life of the perennially troubled teen”. Yea man.

Caught In a Ripoff (Color, 1974) One of the best social guidance films ever made. Ever wonder what happens when you shoplift something and get caught?  Trance-like and horrific. Proof that shoplifting will ruin your life! Don’t miss the gripping slow-motion chase in this classroom classic.

Turned On (Color, 1969)
More swinging excitement, probably trying to keep the kids off drugs and into far more dangerous thrills: fast cars, heavy surf, extreme skiing and more.  Wild “Wipeout” soundtrack!

Stephen Parr
San Francisco archivist, imagemaker and curator Stephen Parr, founder of Oddball Film+Video has a long history of presenting and archiving the unusual. Since the 1970s Parr has produced and documented live performances of John Cage, Christian Marclay and The Ramones, screened his signature pop culture montages from the Danceteria in New York to the Moscow Cinematheque. He’s created found footage based films such as Historical/Hysterical?, The Subject is Sex and Euphoria! which have screened worldwide in venues such as The Anthology Film Archive, Jaaga in Bangalore, South India and the Leeds International Film Festival. He curates an eclectic weekly film series-Oddball Films at his archive and is a frequent presenter at film and media seminars and symposiums. He is an active member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. He has currently completed Laservision, a program of films exploring the history of lasers and holography inaugurating the Science, Art and Cinema series at  Miami’s Frost Museum.

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Oddball Films presents Futures Past: Vintage Visions of Tomorrow, a night of films from the 20th Century that attempt to envision and predict the future. From documentary to comedy, sci-fi, animation, experimental and more, this is a multi-genred night of futurism from the 1900s through the 1980s. Walter Cronkite and the folks at CBS News look forward to domesticity in the 21st Century including paper furniture and 3D TVs in At Home 2001 (1967). Georges Melies applies his patented movie magic to imagine the very first lunar mission in A Trip to the Moon (1902). Mr. Fox is excited to come back to life after his cryogenic defrosting, until he sees what life is like as only a head in the satirical sci-fi short Welcome Back Mr. Fox (1986). In case you were worried that the world has run out of innovation and invention, turn to Lowell Thomas who is happy to report that the wells of innovation have yet to run dry in Frontiers of the Future (1937). Donald Fox's optically printed Omega (1970) foretells the end of the world through a series of stunning images dissolving into ethereally apocalyptic visions. In the stunning No. 00173 (1969), Polish director Jan Habarta creates a bleak dystopian factory momentarily brightened by one beautiful butterfly. Plus! A robot band from Focus on Automation: Pushbuttons and Problems (1940s), The School of the Future (1960s) and even more futuristic surprises!

Date: Friday, October 2nd, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

At Home 2001 (Color, 1967)
Walter Cronkite envisions the future for the home. An exploration of people’s lives and living conditions inspired the advancement of technology in the future, this jaw-dropping episode includes predictions for 3D TVs, paper furniture, robot butlers and more; some ridiculous and some eerily accurate. An episode of the 21st Century, a short-lived spin off of Cronkite's earlier news magazine The 20th Century.

A Trip to the Moon (B+W, 1902)
Georges Melies's fantastical early silent film depicting the then science-fiction concept of traveling to the moon. As a group of explorers head out to the moon (after a send off by a gaggle of beauties), they find a bizarre and magical world of moon goddesses, overgrown fungi, and a community of hostile bug-like aliens.

Welcome Back Mr. Fox (Color, 1986)
A funny science fiction short set in the not-too-distant future. Mr. Fox, a movie producer, has just been resuscitated from a cryogenic freeze, only to find out that his future is not as he hoped it would be. He is only a head that must be attached and detached from a robot body. Directed by Walter Pitt.

Frontiers of the Future (B+W, 1937)
Lowell Thomas hosts this campy piece of technological propaganda. To quell fears that the well of American innovation has run dry, the film traces the pattern of modern industrial growth from 1844. It proceeds with a brief outline of the many inventions and discoveries since that time. The value of research in bringing new products in emphasized. Concludes with an effective presentation of the fact that new frontiers of progress lie in the laboratory.

Omega (Color, 1970)
An optical poem by West Coast experimental filmmaker Donald Fox this is a dazzling, highly original non narrative, exhilaratingly beautiful film. OMEGA deals with the end of mankind on earth, prophesying man's liberation from his earthly bounds to roam the universe at will. By sending an energy ray to the sun and harnessing its solar power, man is able to make an evolutionary leap. The film can be used to explore the outer limits of the concepts of death, evolution the afterlife, and the future of mankind. Phew! A source film that over 40 years later still inspires.

No. 00173 (Color, 1969)
Rare and brilliant, this experimental film by Polish director Jan Habarta portrays a fictional factory with Metropolis-esque workers in radiation suits. In the midst of this grey atmosphere, one butterfly tries to arouse a touch of beauty.

Curator’s Biography

About Oddball Films

Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Oddball Films presents The Erté Era - Deco, Design and Dance from the 20s and 30s, a night of films and clips that highlight Art Deco design. From musical delights to animation, with experimental, documentary, comedy and ephemeral gems, it's going to be a gorgeous and entertaining evening. In Erté (1979), style icon Diana Vreeland narrates a portrait of the man that coined the phrase and single-handedly started the Art Deco movement through his art, advertisement, and costume design. See the construction of some of the Big Apple's deco architecture in Twenty Four Dollar Island (1927), Robert Flaherty’s portrait of New York City in the 1920s. Learn the secrets behind your makeup with the rare and exotic promotional short Accent on Beauty (1930s). George Pal's puppetoons take to the bandstand in the stunning stop-motion short Philips Broadcast of 1938 (1937). The silent experimental piece The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1928) features an imaginative mix of miniatures and live-action to tell a bleak but beautiful tale of broken dreams. Betty Boop is a bit of a flapper as she teaches a dance class in the pre-code cartoon The Dancing Fool (1932). For a stint of comic relief, go decor shopping with George Burns and Gracie Allen in The Antique Shop (1931), a ridiculous and hilarious early short from the famous comedy duo. Plus, a ton of jaw-dropping 1930s musical magic including Fred Astaire and a gaggle full of high-flying chorus girls in an eye-popping musical number from Flying Down to Rio (1933), the disembodied head and army of sparkling tap dancers in The Lullaby of Broadway (1935) from Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1935, and go "Slummin' on Park Avenue"with Alice Faye and the Ritz Brothers in a gender-bending clip from On the Avenue (1937). Early birds will be serenaded by Buster Keaton and his juggling radio act in Grand Slam Opera (1936).

Date: Thursday, October 1st, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Erté (Color, 1979)
A portrait of the life and work of Romain de Tirtoff, better known as Erté, the artist who contributed greatly to the development and acceptance of the art deco design movement of the 20th century. This Russian emigre, influenced by Oriental art, designed for theater, movies, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue magazines. Includes interviews with Erté himself. Directed by Tony Ryan and narrated by style icon Diana Vreeland. Catch a tiny but tantalizing clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEwF4n3I8Ng

Philips Broadcast of 1938 (B+W, 1937, George Pal)

George Pal, master of the “Puppetoon” and special effects innovator created this jazzy, snazzy animated, (with racist caricatures) gem. Philips was one of the first companies to commission Pal's films for advertising. Radio was the "TV" of the time, and Philips wanted to communicate the world-opening wonders of radio to people at theaters. Different kinds of music from around the world provided a perfect backdrop for Pal's animation, which works wonderfully when set to music. As with other animated musical cartoons, the animation in this high-energy puppetoon was "scored" to perfectly match the music, beat for beat.

The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (B+W, 1928 Robert Florey/Slavko Vorkapich)

Expressionistic miniatures interspersed with close-up photography of actors tells the story of a young hopeful actor defeated by the ruthless Hollywood star system. According to co- director Robert Florey the total expenditure of the production was $97.00! Harsh and lovely in almost equal measure! Slavko Vorkapich would go on to devise beautiful and much-loved montage sequences in many films of Hollywood’s Golden age. Photographed by Gregg “Citizen Kane” Toland!

Accent on Beauty(1930s, B+W)

A luscious travelogue and infomercial in one! Those bottles and jars filled with the promise of loveliness are a serious business, requiring both big scary machines and delicate hands. Exotic ingredients, precise manufacturing methods and skilled technicians come together to make de luxe miracles for milady's dressing table.

Twenty Four Dollar Island (1927, B+W)

Legendary filmmaker Robert Flaherty’s portrait of New York City as a living breathing mechanical and industrial overlord, reflecting centuries of human civilization.

The Dancing Fool (B+W, 1932, Dave Fleischer)

Bimbo and Koko are sign painters hired to paint the lettering on the window of “Betty Boop’s Dancing School". Inside Betty teaches her friends how to shake their tail feathers to the tune of "Dancing to Save Your Soul." This cartoon provides us with a glimpse of the kind of dancing and outfits that would be banned from Betty’s cartoons only two years later.

Antique Shop (B+W, 1931)

In this early George Burns and Gracie Allen offering, George stops in at an antique shop to purchase a statue. After considerable difficulty in making connections with a salesperson, he is finally directed to Gracie, and the communication problem can be left to the imagination. The ending will leave you in stitches!

Lullaby of Broadway (B+W, 1935)

The entire "Lullaby of Broadway" number from Gold Diggers of 1935 (Busby Berkeley, 1935) featuring Dick Powell. The silhouette of a smoking woman becomes the city of New York. A Broadway baby is dropped at home, to sleep till the evening. In a swanky 1930s nightspot, a dancing couple is joined by an army of tap dancers, It all the frenzy, a party-goer falls to her death.

On the Avenue (B+W, 1937)

Dick Powell, Alice Faye and the Ritz Brothers sing and dance down the avenue in a highlight reel from the stylish musical comedy from Irving Berlin. A curtain opens on Alice Faye who sings "Let's Go Slummin'." She is joined by a dancing, singing troupe of players who "go slummin'" on Park Avenue. Then the Ritz Brothers cross-dress to parody Faye's performance. With other numbers including "I'm Still Wearing Last Year's Love" and Dick Powell reprising "Let's Go Slummin'" to his bride to be.

For the Early Birds:

Grand Slam Opera (B+W, 1936)
Keaton talks! In this hilarious talkie short from the inimitable Buster Keaton includes a lot of delightful art deco touches and even more laughs. Keaton stars as Elmer Butts, a juggler with big dreams. After he's forced onto a train by a horde of angry townspeople, he sets out for New York to make his dreams come true... by entering a talent show on the radio (who doesn't want to listen to juggling?) After a few dismissals and more than a few prat falls and ridiculous interruptions, Elmer gets his chance, only to disrupt the entire orchestra with his clumsy shenanigans including getting into a baton fight with the conductor!

Curator’s Biography

About Oddball Films
Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.

Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 93, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 93rd program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 93: Trance Cinema is an exploration into the cinematic documentation of ritual, trance and altered states. Drawing on rare ethnographic and historic acquisitions from the archives, this program showcases ritualized trance states, powerful healing ceremonies and ceremonial dances from around the world. Films include Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s legendary ethnographic study Trance and Dance in Bali (1937-39), Anastenaria (1970), a rare documentation of surviving Dionastic worship in Greece featuring ritualized slaughter and a breathtaking fire walking ritual, Ma’Bugi: Trance of the Toraja (1973) the powerful physicality of spirit-possession rituals of the Indonesian highlands, where men climb a ladder of knives, Pomo Shaman (1964), a rare record of a female Pomo Indian doctor who enters a trance and cures a patient with the aid of a spiritual instrument, Walbiri Fire Ceremony (1977) showcases a spectacular three-day Australian Aboriginal communal ritual of penance, Himalayan Shaman of Northern Nepal(1966) John and Patricia Hitchcock’s examination of shamanism in the Himalayas including possession and purification, and Tanka (1976) David Lebrun’s remarkable and fierce animated vision of ancient gods and demons in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Also, pre-show highlights from Land-Divers of Melanesia (1972), Kal Muller and famed ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner’s profile of Melanesian men as they attach vines to their ankles, diving headlong from a 100 ft wooden tower in the Naghol land-diving ritual.

Date: Thursday, October 8th, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Trance and Dance in Bali (1937-39)

This ground-breaking film was produced by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead and records a performance of the Balinese ceremonial kris (dagger) dance-drama, which depicts the never-ending struggle between witch (death-dealing) and dragon (life-protecting), as it was given in the village of Pagoetan in the late 1930s. The dancers experience violent trance seizures, turn their krises against their breasts without injury, and are restored to consciousness with incense and holy water. Narrated by famed anthropologist Margaret Mead against a background of Balinese music. This “ecstatic ethnography” was an extraordinary effort to use film and photography in the field, and the precursor to much of the visual anthropology that has gone on since then.

Anastenaria (1970, B+W)

This very rare and poignant film documents the Anastenaria, a form of popular worship surviving from the days of ancient Greece but now disappearing. The ceremony includes the slaughter and communal eating of a special calf and a spectacular fire-walking ritual.

Ma’Bugi: Trance of the Toraja (Color, 1973)

This film depicts an unusual trance ritual that functions to restore the balance of well-being to an afflicted village community. The film communicates both the psychological abandon of the trance state and the often neglected motivation underlying activities such as the ascent of a ladder of knives and the supernatural curing of the chronically ill. Ma’Bugi clearly portrays the song, dance and pulsating tension that precede dramatic instances of spirit possession in the Toraja highlands Sulawesi (Celebes) Island, Indonesia.

Pomo Indian Shaman (B+W, 1964)

A Pomo Indian shaman participates in a healing ceremony during which she enters a trance and cures a patient with the aid of a spiritual instrument in the throat used to suck out illness.

This film documents the second and final night of a Kashaya Pomo healing ceremony lead by Essie Parrish (1903-1979), a spiritual, cultural and political head of the Kashaya Pomo community and one of the only southwestern Pomo sucking doctor who still practiced this ancient form of doctoring. Along with her good friend, Cache Creek Pomo medicine woman and fellow basket weaver Mabel McKay, Parrish would be the last of the sucking doctors in California—and probably the last in the entire country.

The ceremony took place June 1, 1963 in a ceremonial roundhouse of the Southwestern Pomo (now more commonly referred to as Kashaya or Kashaya Pomo) near Stewarts Point, California. During the ceremony (which is presented without narration), Parrish enters a trance and cures a patient with the aid of a spiritual instrument used to suck out the patient’s illness. Parrish only gave the film crew one chance to shoot the ceremony, with no equipment allowed inside the roundhouse where the ceremony took place. All cameras and lighting were setup to shoot through knot-holes in the walls, which explains the films dark, high contrast appearance.

William Heick’s POMO SHAMAN grants us a rare chance to experience a ceremony generally off-limits to cameras. According to Essie’s son, Parrish only agreed to be filmed knowing that their traditions were going to be preserved on film for both their community as well as the outside world. To this day, the Kashaya watch this film before performing healing ceremonies since the film, according to Essie’s son, is “infused with her healing powers. Music by Bernice Dollar, Bertha Antone, Julia Marrufo.

Walbiri Fire Ceremony (Color, 1977)

From the other side of the planet documents a spectacular three-day Australian Aboriginal communal ritual of penance. The ceremony culminates in a nighttime ordeal in which the owners are humiliated, engage in self-flagellation with burning bundles of twigs and are showered with sparks from burning branches. This is a powerful, engaging and fascinating film.

Himalayan Shaman of Northern Nepal (Color, 1966)

Produced by famed ethnographic filmmakers John and Patricia Hitchcock with the support of grants from the National Science Foundation this film examines the practice of shamanism in Northern Nepal. Shot in the Himalayan valley near the Dhaulagiri massif the film focuses on the work of a shaman, his costume and procedures including possession, sucking out evil spirits from his clients, contact with the "other world" and purifying his mouth with fire.

Tanka (Color, 1976)

"An extraordinary film."-Melinda Wortz, Art News

Tanka means, literally, a thing rolled up. David LeBrun’s Tanka is brilliantly powered by the insight that Tibetan religious paintings are intended to be perceived in constant movement rather than repose. The film, photographed from Tibetan scroll paintings of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, is a cyclical vision of ancient gods and demons, wild revels, raging fires and sea battles with monsters-an animated journey through the image world of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead”. With an original score by Ashish Khan (sarod), Buddy Arnold (saxophone, clarinet, flute), Pranesh Khan (tablas) and Francisco Lupica (percussion).

Land-Divers of Melanesia (1972, Color)

To ensure a good yam crop, men of Pentecost Island in Melanesia attach vines to their ankles and dive headlong from a wooden tower over 100 feet tall, a ritual referred to as Naghol or land-diving. Those who dive say the fall clears their mind. The vines are relatively elastic and the ground is softened so injury is rare. For Pentecost Islanders the annual dive takes an appropriate place among other rituals and ceremonies such as blessing the taro crop, circumcising young boys and feasting with relatives, all of which keep them in touch with the forces that control the world in which they live. This film was directed by Kal Muller in collaboration with renown ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner (Forest of Bliss, Rivers of Sand) for The Film Study Center at Harvard University.

Oddball Films welcomes photographer and filmmaker Bill Daniel to our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Daniel will be here in person, screening his documentary Who is Bozo Texino? chronicling the secret world of hobo graffiti artists, as well as presenting his pop-up punk photo show Tri-X Noise featuring 30 years of underground photography. Ride the cinematic rails with Daniel's film Who is Bozo Texino? a 16-year chronicle of the search for the source of a ubiquitous and mythic rail graffiti— a simple sketch of a character with an infinity-shaped hat and the scrawled moniker, “Bozo Texino”— a drawing seen on railcars for over 80 years. Daniel’s gritty black and white film uncovers a secret society and it’s underground universe of hobo and railworker graffiti, and includes interviews with legendary boxcar artists Colossus of Roads, Coaltrain, Herby, and The Rambler. Before the screening, tour Daniel's Tri-X Noise, a pop-up photo show comprised of 30 years of 35mm photographs beginning with the early 80s punk scene in Texas, featuring all of your favorite old school punk bands. This exhibit, all non-digital darkroom prints, charts a path starting with punk shows in Texas, and crawls through various subcultures from the 90s graffiti scene in San Francisco, freight hopping scenarios, art openings in Los Angeles, house shows in Louisiana, generator shows on the Monongahela River, etc... all seen through Daniel's unique, spelunker flash-lit vision. These shows are all one-night pop-up site-specific events, with a free-standing “gallery” -- a free-standing wall that stands in the middle of a space, with photos on both sides. Plus! Between the photo show and the film, Daniel will be speaking about his creative and migratory practices and we'll be screening the 16mm traveling carny documentary Circus Nomads (1975) from the archive.

Date: Friday, October 9th, 2015

7:00pm: Reception and Photo Show 8:00pm: Screening
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 for photo show and screening. Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Who is Bozo Texino?

"A Hypnotic, rail-rattling tone poem of subversive wayfarer wisdom." - Sacramento News & Review

Shooting over a 16-year period, Bill Daniel rode freights across the West carrying a Super-8 sound camera and a 16mm Bolex. During his quest he discovered the roots of a folkloric tradition that has gone mostly unnoticed for a century. Taking inspiration from Beat artists Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac, the film functions as both a sub-cultural documentary and a stylized fable on wanderlust and outsider identity. “I was drawn to the subject by the universal graffiti impulse and the classic, corny notion of freight train blues escape.”– BD.

Who is Bozo Texino? is a film on the 100-year-old tradition of hobo and railworker graffiti. The project is the result of a 20-year study of “monikers “ and is fabricated from hours of 16mm and super 8 film, most of it shot on freight trips across the western US. The film includes interviews with some of the railroad’s greatest graffiti legends: Colossus of Roads, The Rambler, Herby (RIP) and the granddaddy of them all, Bozo Texino. The film also catches some of the socioeconomic history of hobo subculture from its roots after the Civil War to the present day. Included are interviews with tramps that Daniel encountered in his travels. The range of the interviews, and the film’s style deal with both the clichés and the harsh realities of tramp life. In researching hobo culture Daniel found the written histories fraught with myth, and was initially frustrated by the apparent lack of verifiable truth to much of the lore.

"At some point in the research, and in the filming, I had to give up on the idea of being able to tell every story down to the detail. One of my initial impulses was to create a highly resolved document that would allow people in the future to see exactly what this culture was like. Impossible enough. But at the same time I was painfully aware that to broadcast these discoveries would alter or wreck the innocence and freedom that was there. Gradually, I realized that to report on freight train culture I should just acknowledge this mythologizing that permeates the culture and adopt that as an essential part of my approach. But the difficulty was, at the same time, to present this purely documentary material that I earnestly want to be appreciated and preserved. And no matter what the disappointment might be in finding the lonely reality behind a particular myth or graffiti, there is a mystery, or truth, that will always evade the documentarian and the audience."– Bill Daniel

About Bill Daniel:
Texas-born, San Francisco exiled, and confirmed tramp, Bill Daniel continues to experiment with survivalism and bricolage in his attempts to record and report on the various social margins he finds himself in. Currently based on the Texas gulf coast, Daniel divides his time between Texas and touring.
Daniel's work has received awards from Creative Capital, Film Arts Foundation, The Pioneer Fund, Texas Filmmaker Production Fund, the R & B Feder Charitable Foundation, and The Western States Media Alliance. He was a Wattis Foundation artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where his installation "Souls Harbor" was exhibited in Dec. In 1999 he was in-residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts where he produced several multi-projection 16mm film installations, including "Trespassing Sign" in collaboration with the late Margaret Kilgallen.

In 2001 his hobo campfire installation "The Girl on the Train in the Moon" was included in "Widely Unknown" at Deitch Projects in New York. A veteran of the touring circuit, Daniel has programmed, booked and exhibited several mobile art shows. In 1997-98 he curated a weekly screening series, Funhouse Cinema, in Austin, that also weekly screened in Houston and San Antonio. Daniel is also recognized for his work as cinematographer and editor for filmmaker Craig Baldwin. Other endeavors include zines--contributing photography to The Western Roundup, a punk fanzine in 1981-82 designed by Michael Nott, and publishing/editing Detour, a situationist journal, in 1986. He is also the creator of an experimental sports league, The Texas Gas-Powered Leaf Blower Hockey Association.

Screening on 16mm before the show (at 8:00pm):

Circus Nomads (Color, 1975)
Australian documentarian Ivan Gaal goes on the road with an out-of-the-ordinary family of performers. As we all know the circus travels with everything under the big top and more. This film profiles the colorful mood, the magic and associated hardship of the circus world and its performers. Gaal captures dancers atop horses, elephant stunts, clowns farting fire, and trapeze artists, but also some of the ordinary moments between routines for the real people that travel from town to town to take the magic with them.

About Oddball Films:

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Oddball Films is pleased to co-present at 3rd i’s 13th ANNUAL SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL (Oct 22-25 in San Francisco; Nov 1 in Palo Alto).

Labor of Love
Aditya Vikram Sengupta, India, 2014, 84mins
Where: New People Cinema
When Sunday, October 25, 1 pm
Lyrical and intimate, this unique cinematic experience delves into the lives of an ordinary couple whose competing work schedules keep them apart. Sengupta's arresting visuals build into to a beautiful, dreamlike crescendo, while the resonant soundscape and retro score fill the silences with deep emotional textures. An ode to so many labors of love, including that of cinema, this film is a must-see for cinephiles.
http://www.thirdi.org/event/labor-of-love-asha-jaoar-majhe/

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Om Dar-B-Dar
Kamal Swaroop, India, 1988, 98mins
November 1st, CineArts at Palo Alto square, 7:15pm

Digitally Restored Version! Set in a picturesque town in Rajasthan, Kamal Swaroop's cult classic chronicles the coming-of-age of Om, a young boy interested in magic and religion. Touted as 'the great Indian LSD trip', the film premiered to rave reviews at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988, and has since then achieved mythological status in India, influencing a whole generation of filmmakers.

http://www.thirdi.org/event/om-dar-b-dar/

Use promotional code "cp_2015” when purchasing tickets for this film and receive 20% off an individual $10 ticket (until online sales end on the day of the screening - noon on weekdays and 7am on weekends. Online fees not discounted.)

For the complete festival program and to purchase tickets, please visit: http://www.thirdi.org/

Cinema Soiree: Video Synthesizer Works with Denise Gallant of Synopsis Video - Thur. June 18 - 8PM

Strange Sinema 89: Visionaries of Time and Space - Thur. June 25 - 8PM

How to Be an Artist - Fri. June 26 - 8PM

Sexual Miseducation - Thur. July 2nd - 8PM

Strange Sinema 91: Oddball's Strangest Hits! - Fri. Aug. 21st - 8PM

Learn Your Lesson from Alexa Kenin - A Memorial Afterschool Special Triple Feature - Thur. Sep. 10th - 8PM

Classic Cartoon Cavalcade - Fri. Aug. 28th - 8PM

Altered Realities - Inside the Mind's Eye - Thur. Aug 27th - 8PM

What the F(ilm)?! 13: Cine-Insanity from the Archive - Fri. Sep. 4th - 8PM

Beyond Reason - Dada and Surrealist Cinema - Thur. Sep. 3rd - 8PM

Orphan Offerings: Refugee Reels from the 3TON Treasure Chest - Fri. Sep. 11

Cinema Soiree: Tommy Becker's Passing Periods - Thur. Sep 24th - 8PM

MESS with Beat Poet ruth weiss - Fri. Sep. 18th - 8PM

Cartoons Go To War: Animated Propaganda from WWII - Thur. Sep. 17th - 8PM

Strange Sinema 92: Too Cool - Fri. Sep. 25th - 8PM

Futures Past - Vintage Visions of Tomorrow - Fri. Oct. 2nd - 8PM

The Erté Era - Deco, Design and Dance from the 20s and 30s - Thur. Oct. 1st - 8PM

Strange Sinema 93: Trance Cinema - Thur. Oct. 8th - 8PM

Cinema Soiree with Bill Daniel: Who is Bozo Texino? and Tri-X Noise - Fri. Oct. 9th - 8PM

Oddball is Co-presenting at the 3rd-i International South Asian Film Festival - Oct. 22-Nov. 1 in Palo Alto