Oddball Films

Oddball Films presents Revolutionary Black Voices, an empowering and entertaining evening of 16mm film rarities documenting the history and enduring legacy of the Black musicians, poets, revolutionaries, protestors, and artists that stood up and sung out to change the world. Watch the Black Panthers (including Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver) protest, lay down their demands for a fair and just country, and even see Huey P. Newton speak from the Alameda County Prison in the radical and slightly experimental "Newsreel"Off The Pigs! (1969). In James Brown: The Man (1974), "Mr. Dynamite" discusses his rise from the slums to the top of the charts, as well as his dreams for the Black community - including an all-Black currency known as "brown and black" stamps. In Protest: Black Power (1975), view the struggles, set-backs and triumphs of the Black Power movement with footage of Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Martin Luther King. In The Weapons of Gordon Parks (1965), the famed LIFE photographer describes the camera as his weapon of choice against a hostile and bigoted America. Hey Cab! (1969), based on the life of Bob Teague shows one Black man's difficulty in even the simplest task of hailing a taxi on a rainy night. "The Princess of Black Poetry" recites her poetry and relates it to the Black and Women's rights movements in a segment of Spirit to Spirit: Nikki Giovanni (1986). Plus, a dance number from The Alvin Ailey Company, Fats Waller provides a delightfully wacky musical break with the Soundie Your Feet's Too Big (1949), Count Basie and his Orchestra perform Take Me Back Baby (1949), Cab Calloway brings us The Blowtop Blues (1945) and Nina Simone gives us a rare performance of To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1970s). Early birds will get a taste of Aretha Franklin, Soul Singer (1968) which captures the Queen of Soul as a singer and musician in the whirl crossover stardom and also as an artist questing to find the truest expression of her gifts. All films screened on 16mm from our stock footage archive.

Date: Thursday, July 14th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp St. San Francisco

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

Featuring:

James Brown - The Man (Color, 1974)

A rarely seen documentary focusing on the man, his career and his philosophy. From his own background as a drifter and convict to his many successful businesses-including his James Brown "Golden Platter" soul food restaurants to his "Brown and Black" trading stamp venture this film paints a portrait of Brown as Black activist and community leader. Riveting performance clips are interspersed with Brown's message to youth: "Don't hate-communicate", still applicable today.

Off The Pigs! (B+W, 1969)
This film, produced by Newsreel, (a series of radical, cooperatively run, decentralized film collectives organized in 1967) documents the Black Panther movement in Oakland in the late 1960s in an experimental and explosive way. Huey P Newton speaks from Alameda County Prison about the prime objectives of the Black Panthers ideology as Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver take to the streets in protest of the same things people are fighting for now-almost 50 years later. A sobering reminder that we haven't come as far as we thought and the age-old adage of repeating history.

Protest: Black Power (Color, 1975)

This powerful documentary analyzes and defines 'Black Power' with descriptive passages of its leading exponents. Features footage of speeches by prominent civil rights and Black leaders including Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Martin Luther King, all presenting a variety of different viewpoints.

Weapons of Gordon Parks (Color, 1965)

"My mother had freed me from the curse of inferiority long before she died by not allowing me to take refuge in excuses that I had been born Black ... when I think back to my years as a pullman car waiter, flophouse porter, piano player, in a hotel at sixteen ... I know what I think I don't want for my children or their children ... I can only hope that the weapons they choose will be tempered with love instead of hatred." - Gordon Parks

A LIFE profile of iconic American photographer Gordon Parks, a groundbreaking American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for LIFE magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft.

Spirit to Spirit: Nikki Giovanni (Color, 1986, excerpt)

The "Princess of Black Poetry" Nikki Giovanni reads her poetry and relates it to her life experience with the civil and women's rights movements with stylized and lyrical visuals.

Hey Cab! (Color, 1969)

This short film demonstrates the everyday racism that pervades our society through the simple story of a Black man trying to hail a taxi on a rainy New York night. Based on the real life experience of football star Bob Teague in his book "Letters to a Black Boy".

Blowtop Blues (1945, B+W)

One of the great jazzy entertainers, A talented jazz singer and a superior scatter Cab Calloway’s wild gyrations and on-stage showmanship at the Cotton Club sometimes overshadowed the quality of his always excellent bands. This rarity includes some real heavy hitters of early jazz including Cab Calloway and his Orchestra - Cab Calloway, vocal and leader; Russell Smith, Paul Webster, Jonah Jones, Shad Collins, trumpets; Tyree Glenn, Quentin Jackson, Keg Johnson, Fred Robinson, trombones; Hilton Jefferson, Andrew Brown, alto saxes; Ike Quebec, Al Gibson, tenor saxes; Greely Walton, baritone sax; Dave Rivera, piano; Danny Barker, guitar; Milt Hinton, string bass and J. C. Heard, drums.

Jazz and Jive Soundies (B+W, 1949)

Fats Waller in “Your Feet’s Too Big”

Fats sings about how his feet are too big to dance as he demonstrates how that is a problem on the dance floor.

Count Basie Orchestra in “Take Me Back, Baby”

Count Basie's legendary jazz/big band orchestra that lasted over 50 years from its founding in the mid-30s to Count Basie's death in 1984. One of Basie's saxophonists day dreams about winning back his lady love. Vocals by Jimmy "Mr. Five by Five" Rushing.

For the Early Birds:

Aretha Franklin, Soul Singer (Color, 1968)

Whether Franklin is harmonizing with her brother in her father’s Detroit church or working out a new composition of her sister’s in the studio, it’s clear that music is a family matter with the Franklins. But when you’re the Queen of Soul, roots spread even wider: when February 16, 1968 is declared Aretha Franklin Day, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is among the well-wishers. Along with electrifying performance footage, we are also treated to intimate moments such as a living room dance practice with her backup singers and demonstration of various gospel and jazz piano styles. Song highlights include You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman, Chain of Fools and of course Respect.


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 200 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 welcomes back Author and Film Historian Jim Morton for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. Film historian and editor of ReSearch’s Incredibly Strange Films, Morton has turned his attention to the films of East Germany and discovered that they are every bit as odd as anything from the West. He will be at Oddball Films for one night only to discuss the films of the former German Democratic Republic, with clips from some of his favorites. Some of these films have not yet been released in United States. Some may never be. Here’s your chance to see what was going on behind the Berlin Wall. Morton's previous soiree sold out, and he's finally returned with a second helping of all new weird and wonderful clips. This time he is taking on genre films in the GDR, with all-new clips of everything from westerns to musicals. Here’s the story of the topsy-turvy world of red westerns where the Indians are the good guys, and spy films, where the United States plots world domination. Learn the tragic story of Dean Reed, the American pop singer who become known as the “Red Elvis”; discover the secret world of underground filmmaking that flourished beyond the reach of the government. The classic film genres of musicals and film noir are also revisited in all new clips. If you’re not familiar with the strange world of East German cinema, you’re in for a treat.

Date: Thursday, July 28th, 2016 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 Clips From:

Musicals

No Cheating Darling (Color, 1972)

More singing and dancing from behind the Iron Curtain*

Westerns

Blood Brothers (Color, 1975)

East Germany made westerns, just like we did, but in East Germany, the Indians are the good guys and the cowboys are the bad guys.*

Spy movies

For Eyes Only (B+W, 1963)

Likewise, the East Germans had there spy movies. They were more realistic than the Bond films, and Stasi agents were the good guys.

Film Noir

The Story of a Murder (B+W, 1965)

East Germany only made a few films that could be considered film noir, but they are all great, and make West Germany seem like a very seedy place.*

Children's Films

The Tinderbox (Color, 1959)

Fairytale films were East Germany's cash cow, because they followed the original fairytales closely, the West allowed them, and some were even shown in the United States. This is one of those films.

Animation (2 examples)

Although there were a few longer of animation using stop-motion, I'll be showing two cartoon shorts aimed at adults.

Juvenile Delinquent Films

Berlin, Schoenhauser Corner (B+W, 1957)

During the fifties, JD films were all the rage in the United States, Britain and West Germany. East Germany also had its own variations on this.

Documentaries

Winter Adé (B+W, 1988)

Most of these were safe, party line films, and in some cases, intentional propaganda, but this film has a dark side.

Underground

Konrad, the Mom Said

Believe it or not, there were also underground films, made by rebels and punks who tread the edges of society in East Germany, much like the underground artists in the West. These films are experimental and range from weirdly fascinating, to unwatchably self-indulgent. This is one of the better ones.

*Film has not been released in the USA

About Jim Morton:

Jim Morton has written extensively on the subject of forgotten or unusual films. His work in "Re/Search #10: Incredibly Strange Films" helped redefine film criticism and its concepts of good and bad cinema. He has contributed essays to several other film books, including "Lost Highways" (Jack Sargeant and Stephanie Watson), "Sex and Zen and a Bullet in the Head" (Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins), and "Land of a Thousand Balconies" (Jack Stevenson). Currently he is working on a book about East German Cinema, and is the author of a website (http://eastgermancinema.com) devoted to the subject.


About Oddball Films

Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Vintage Burlesque Bonanza!, a titillating night of burlesque beauties, oddities, and even animation from the 1930s-1950s all screened on 16mm film from the archive. These erotic and exotic artifacts of yesterday are tame by today's standards, but offer us a view into the buttoned-up sexuality of the mid-century man. The night features an array of lovely ladies (and a few strapping men) including the burlesque queens Sally Rand, Faith Bacon, Lili St. Cyr, Betty Dolan and more with more bubble and fan dances than you can handle. Behold the battle of the bubbles with three interpretations of bodacious bubbles including Lili St. Cyr in a tantalizing Bubble Bath Dance (1952) and the ethereal and breathtaking Bubble Dance with Sally Rand (1942), which is parodied in the all-star Merrie Melodies cartoon Hollywood Steps Out (1934), which we will also be screening. Get into the fan dance, originated by Faith Bacon as a way around Broadway censors in Faith Bacon: A Lady with Fans (1950s), and see Sally Rand as she displays the erotic dance at the World's Fair in Streets of Paris (1933), then see another cartoon interpretation in the super rarity Krazy Kat Frogs and Kats (1930s) featuring an old perv with x-ray machine trying to see Miss Kitty nude. Burlesque gets a little bizarre with our next three favorites: a marionette out-strips a stripper in Doll Dance (1940s), The Fabulous Cat Girl (1950s) will scratch her way into your heart, and Betty Dolan fights off her Satanic side in Satan Tease (1950s). Meet the Sweethearts of Burlesque including "Sensational Sandra Storm in Action" (1941), "Sweethearts of Burlesque" (1948) with Pat Dorsey, Lorraine Lee and Pat O'Connor,"Three Party Girls" (1930) with three gal pals going to a costume party who accidentally burn their outfits with an iron, "Betty Rowland in The Magic Bottle" (1950), featuring Betty dancing in a bottle on a nightclub bar with lots of old time-y special effects and camera tricks, "Caught Without Costume" (1930) with a lovely lady who goes skinny dipping, loses her clothes to a pervy dog and has to cover up with a barrel, and "Hunting Bare" (1930s) with three gals out on a hunting trip who mark their path with discarded clothing. And we couldn't let the girls have all the fun, so we're pulling out some fabulous Vintage Beefcake Shorts with handsome young men stripping down and shaking their stuff: Amateur Strip (1960s) and the homegrown homoerotica The Groping Hand (1960s) featuring a groovy soundtrack and shots of 1960s North Beach. So strap on your tassels, grab your fan and blow some bubbles, because it's a scintillating night of stripteases and sensuality at San Francisco's strangest film archive.

Date: Friday, July 22nd, 2016 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:

Battle of the Bubbles!

Sally Rand's Bubble Dance (1942)

Blonde beauty Sally Rand dances effortlessly with a giant bubble in little more than a well-placed scarf. The ethereal nature of this short elevates it above your average smut.

Lili St. Cyr in Bubble Bath Dance (B+W, 1952)

Lili St. Cyr was the most influential burlesque dancer in the second half of the 20th century. Her hip-swiveling ways swayed pop-culture sirens from Marilyn Monroe (who copied her style) to Madonna (who bought her famous push up bras) for decades to come.

St. Cyr shimmied across the country with inventive routines in posh nightclubs amassing legions of famous fans, including Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan. Her notoriety and fame brought financial and commercial successes, with roles in movies like Howard Hughes' Son of Sinbad and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead.

Hollywood Steps Out (Color, 1934)

This bizarre Merrie Melodies cartoon features caricatures of a who's who of Hollywood big wigs all stopping to ogle an avatar of Blonde Burlesque megastar Sally Rand doing her famous Bubble Dance.

Sweethearts of Burlesque (B+W, 1930s-1950s)

"What Happens in a Paris Dive" (1930s) A scene in a Montmartre Paris Cafe taking place in 1905 starring the French Dancer Illana, "The Dance of Desire" (1930s), "Sensational Sandra Storm in Action" (1941), "Sweethearts of Burlesque" (1948) with Pat Dorsey, Lorraine Lee and Pat O'Connor, "The One and Only Faith Bacon Originator of the 'Fan Dance'" (1949) with Bacon appearing nude as she dances with her signature giant ostrich feather fans, "Salome the Dance of One Veil" (1948) with a dancing brunette in a twirly dress wearing ballerina shoes and showing off a few gymnastic moves as she strips down, "Three Party Girls" (1930) with three gal pals going to a costume party who accidentally burn their outfits with an iron, "Betty Rowland in The Magic Bottle" (1950), featuring Betty dancing in a bottle on a nightclub bar with lots of old time-y special effects and camera tricks, "Caught Without Costume" (1930) with a lovely lady who goes skinny dipping, loses her clothes to a pervy dog and has to cover up with a barrel, "Jug of Tea-se Dance" (1950) with more bottle dancing, and "Hunting Bare" (1930s) with three gals out on a hunting trip who mark their path with discarded clothing.

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.

The Fabulous Cat Girl (B+W, c. 1950s)

Exotic burlesque teaser featuring a blonde-haired cat-woman with all the right moves for the alley.

Satan-Tease (B+W, 1955)

Burlesque queen Betty Dolan brings new meaning to the phrase dancing with the devil. Cleverly costumed, Miss Dolan's right hand is the hand of the devil and she can't stop it from trying to get to third base. Strange and erotic on many different levels, it must be seen to be believed!

Streets of Paris (Dir. Burton Holmes, B+W, 1933)

A tour of the Paris pavilion at the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair exposition in Chicago features Sally Rand and her famous Fan Dance.

Krazy Kat, “Frogs and Kats” (B+W, 1930s, silent with added soundtrack)
Miss Kitty Kat is dying to get her time on stage, so when she falls on the leading lady for the night (and turns her into a frog?), she's got to beg Krazy to accompany her on the piano. Miss Kitty Kat finally gets her chance and dances with feathers and other cats burlesque style. One lecherous guy in the audience even has an x-ray machine to see Miss Kitty nude!

Vintage Homoerotica!

These rare beefcake shorts rarely feature any action, just tons of naked men letting their junk hang out while they dress up, strip down and bounce around!

Amateur Strip:
Various men (all nude), dancing in front of a red curtain. Slow-motion shots as they swing their hips and gyrate. Behold the acrobatic stunts, jumping rope, men in a chorus line, taking turns dancing solo. One man even uses another as a wheelbarrow.

The Groping Hand (Color, 1968)

This bizarre slice of homoerotica was shot in San Francisco’s North Beach in the heyday of free love. A hunky male gets all revved up gazing at the live sex show signs and clubs on Broadway when he’s beckoned in by a female hand. Once inside he cuts loose, “stripping” his time away to down and dirty soul music.



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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Humanimation: Stop-Motion Pixilation, a super fun and funny program of stop-motion animation utilizing human actors as puppets, animated one frame at a time. Films include four shorts from Academy Award winning luminary Norman McLaren and the National Film Board of Canada: Neighbors (1952) a grim tale of two men feuding over a beautiful flower, Two Bagatelles (1953) with two delightful tales of men dancing and flying over a field of grass, A Chairy Tale (1957) featuring music by Ravi Shankar, and his hilarious Opening Speech (1961) with an out of control microphone. From the hilarious and Oscar-nominated duo Leo Janson and Chuck Menville come four raucous shorts of speed racers without their cars in Stop Look and Listen (1967), cowpokes without their horses in the Western spoof Blaze Glory (1969), bikers without their motorcycles in Vicious Cycles (1967), and high-flying superheroes in Captain Mom (1972). Other films include Mike Jitlov's eye-popping high-speed chase The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979), the Encyclopedia Britannica short Let's Pretend: Magic Sneakers (1969) featuring a high speed pair of enchanted Converse, and a section of Six Filmmakers in Search of a Wedding (1971). Plus more! All films screened on 16mm from our stock footage archive.

Date: Thursday, July 21st, 2016 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:

Four Wild Shorts by Charles David “Chuck” Menville and Len Janson

In the 1960s two friends, Charles David “Chuck” Menville and Len Janson revived the then-dead art of stop motion pixilation animation. Pixilation, the animation of living beings, and object animation, was nothing new to film, but Menville and Janson took the process to a whole new level both technically and creatively.

Their first collaboration, Stop, Look and Listen (1967), was nominated for an Academy Award. In this short film the main characters “drive” down city streets in invisible cars. It’s

ostensibly a public safety film that informs the audience of the merits of following the rules of the road. Wildly inventive use of stop motion techniques-- use of human bodies as vehicles(!) make this eye-popping short a sensation.

Also screening is Blaze Glory (1969), a spoof of Westerns. This time our heroes and villains ride around, without horses in sped up style. The film was a hit short at Midnight Movie screenings in the early 70s.

Our third film, Vicious Cycles (1967), features a gang of hard-core bikers intimidating a prissy motor scooter club. The films represent a revived genre and exuberant, quirky style.

Captain Mom (Color, 1972)
A bizarro superhero spoof from Oscar-nominated pixilation duo Len Janson and Chuck Menville (Stop, Look and Listen, Blaze Glory). Captain Mom (played by Menville himself) is on a romantic mission as he signs up for a superhero dating service and lands the she-hulk of his dreams!

Four from Norman McLaren

Neighbors (Color, 1952)

Utilizing the new technique of animating live actors (fellow NFB animators Paul Ladouceur and Grant Munro), the Oscar-winning Neighbours is Norman McLaren’s most famous and important film. A parable of aggression and war, two men sit peacefully in lawn chairs when a flower appears on the boundary of their properties. In the quarrel that ensues the flower is destroyed, and the men turn to demons, destroying everything, including themselves.

Two Bagatelles (Color, 1953, Norman McLaren)

Two experiments in pixilation (animating humans and objects through stop-motion photography) co-directed by animation genius and founder of the National Film Board of Canada Norman McLaren and filmmaker and actor Grant Munro (who coined the word “pixilation”). In the first, (which was inspired by their award-winning film NEIGHBOURS/VOISINS) a man waltzes to a synthesized version of a Johann Strauss melody; in the second, he moves around playfully to a tune played on a street organ.

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.

Opening Speech (B+W, 1961)

Featuring Norman McLaren himself, he tries to master a recalcitrant microphone at the opening of the 1st Montreal International Film Festival. At every turn, McLaren finds himself duped by the wily mic. McLaren gives a performance worthy of Tati’s Monsieur Hulot or Peter Seller’s Clouseau.

Let's Pretend: Magic Sneakers (Color, 1969)
Alternately evoking Norman MacLaren's stop-motion live action films, The Wizard of Oz and The Red Balloon, Magic Sneakers tells the tale of a boy and his fears and the special power of some castoff Chuck Taylors. The exotic tabla music gives the pathos that bit of "far out" so prized in this period of school film.

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The Wizard of Speed and Time (Color, 1979, Mike Jitlov)

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 and then slips on a banana-peel, and comically crashes into a film stage, which he then brings to life in magical ways. Jitlov is a special effects technician, and produced all of the special effects in the film himself, many through stop motion animation.

This mind-blowing, celebratory short was originally shown as a segment of an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney and later extended to a feature length film.

Six Filmmakers in Search of a Wedding (Color, 1971, excerpt)
Six rapid-fire shorts covering the same wedding - some naturalistic and gentle and others more comedic and satirical (one is done in pixilation with background music by famed Canadian animator Derek Lamb; another is crudely animated with photos and drawings moved across stationary backgrounds). Interesting fashions, very Seventies.


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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 102, a monthly evening of newly discovered, old finds and rarities from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 102nd program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 102: Experiments in Electronic Artsis a heady, techno-cultural look at the art, sound and early electronic art forms that jump-started the 60s and transformed the way we create and experience art and technology. Films feature documentaries that survey tech art and music innovators as well as experimental and avant garde shorts showcasing early analog and computer assisted animation and graphics. Art For Tomorrow (1969) is an eye-popping exploration of experimental tech-oriented art incorporating early IBM computers, cybernetics, heart beat triggers, invisible art by magnetism featuring famed artists such as Yaacov Agam, Wen-Ying Tsai, John Mott-Smith, Jean Tinguely and Victor Vasarely’s early experiments with IBM computers. Get in a moogy kind of mood with Discovering Electronic Music (1983) an introduction to the synthesizers and computers used to create electronic music, including the legendary Fairlight CMI, one of the first sampling synthesizers used in music production. Bell Laboratories brings us Incredible Machine (1968) which previews the latest developments in computer-assisted imagery, electronic music, and voice processing. Catalog (1961) features computer graphics pioneer and cinema innovator John Whitney’s kaleidoscopic demo reel made with equipment salvaged from WWII. Ken Rudolph takes us through the history of Art in eight pulsing minutes in Gallery (1969) with electronic music sound score by Clockwork Orange composer Wendy Carlos. We follow that up with the astonishing Peter Foldes'Hunger (1974), one of the first computer-generated animated shorts and a metamorphic nightmare of greed, gluttony and lust. Languid rhythms of fades, dissolves and superimpositions permeate 7362 (1967) a masterful avant-garde film by the auteur of the optical printer (and sometime Star Wars special effects wiz) Pat O’Neill. Experiments in Motion Graphics (1968) once again features early computer motion graphics by John Whitney and a discussion of the computers prospect as an art making tool. Plus! The Critic (1963), an animated Oscar winner from the great Ernie Pintoff with comedy legend Mel Brooks relentlessly ragging on the experimental animation he's shown to hilarious effect.

Date: Friday, July 29th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Featuring:

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

Discovering Electronic Music (Color, 1983)

An introduction to the synthesizers and computers used to create electronic music, including the legendary Fairlight CMI, one of the first sampling synthesizers used for pop music production. Directed by Bernard Wilets, a veteran educational producer and particularly known for his “Discovering Music” series. You'll get a crash course on a vintage modular synthesizer. Envelopes, sine waves, oscillators, filters, galore!

Incredible Machine (Color, 1968)

The crew from Bell Laboratories demonstrates novel uses of the computer in audio-visual communication research: computer generated graphics; computer-assisted design of an electronic circuit drawn with a light-pen on a cathode-ray tube; simulation of human speech and singing; and composition of music and of abstract or figurative color pictures and animation films.

Catalog(Color, 1961)

Famed cinematic innovator John Whitney's demo reel of work created with his analog computer/film/camera machine he built from a WWII anti-aircraft gun sight. Whitney and the techniques he developed with this machine were what inspired special FX wizard Douglas Trumbull) to use the slit scan technique on 2001: A Space Odyssey. An eye-opening and inspiring work of early computer generated imagery.

Gallery (Color, 1969)

The fastest Art History course you’ll ever take. A pulsing, speedy slideshow of some of the most important pieces of art, shown chronologically from DaVinci to Dali. With a Moog soundtrack by infamous Clockwork Orange composer and synth Goddess Wendy Carlos. Directed by Ken Rudolph.

Hunger (Color, 1973, Peter Foldes)
At an extremely rapid pace, images dissolve, move, morph and/or reappear into things or objects that become more and more exaggerated and absurd in this witty and disturbing cartoon by Hungarian director Peter Foldes. One of the first computer-generated films, this Jury Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival and Academy Award Nominee is a satire focusing on the self-indulgence that plagues our ‘hungry’ world, and depicts a man as he continues to eat, and eat, and eat!

7362 (Dir. Pat O’Neill, Color, 1965-67)

A mind-blowing visual and sound experience by famed experimental filmmaker (and sometime Star Wars special effects wiz) Pat O’Neill with sound by cult musician/early synthesizer artist Joseph Byrd (The United States of America). Described as “a bilaterally symmetrical (west to east) fusion of human, biomorphic and mechanical shapes in motion. Has to do with the spontaneous generation of electrical energy. A fairly rare (ten years ago) demonstration of the Sabattier Effect (re-exposing partially developed film to light during the processing) in motion. Title refers to the film stock of the same name.

Experiments in Motion Graphics (Color, 1968) John Whitney, Sr., legendary American animator, composer and inventor, is often considered the father of computer animation. In this early profile, he expounds on the process and philosophy behind his pioneering work at IBM and demonstrates some of the fundamental concepts of motion graphics.

For more information about John Whitney’s work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Whitney_(animator)

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The Critic (Color, 1963)

An animated Oscar winner from the great Ernie Pintoff- the “Critic is Mel Brooks, sitting in a movie theater. Loudly describing/deriding what he sees on the screen (a spoof of a Norman McLaren-styled animation). Brooks' old man character relentlessly rags on the experimental animation he's shown to hilarious effect.

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Curator Biography:

Stephen Parr’s 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 Films, a stock film company 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 is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 would like to welcome you to The Oddball OlympiXXX - 16mm Sports and Smut, a nutty night of antique bizarro sports newsreels, animated Lego Olympians, and sexy snippets from yesteryear. There will be baby races, dolphin basketball, scantily clad archers, figure skating penguins, naked pogo jumping, rollerskating chimps, bald head contests, nudie cuties, lady judo fighters, skinny dipping swimmers, gondola-jousting, and more stupid sports people did before the internet! Czech cartoon hero Mr. Koumal invents fire for the opening torch ceremony, but another man steals his glory in Mr. Koumal Carries the Torch (1968). Dive into the sexist sports short Contest Jitters (1950s) with ladies judo-fighting, kayaking, axe-throwing, and being painted with mud and hung on a ling while the narrator says things like "Let's be honest men, what good is beauty to a girl unless there's a man around to appreciate it."World renowned archer Howard Hill shows off his high-flying precision with the help of some leggy cuties in short shorts in It's Done with Arrows (1947). It's time for the baby olympics with Babes in Sportland (1950s) featuring crawling races, golfing toddlers, babies with bows and arrows and more underage ridiculousness. Pete Smith produces and narrates a wacky compendium of the most insane contests of yesteryear including a diaper rally, pie eating contests, kitty shot put, and jousting on gondolas in Curious Contests (1950). Your favorite childhood building blocks become the stuff of champions in an unprecedented five pack of Lego Sports Shorts (1986) including the audience favorites Figure Skating and Gymnastics as well as the skiing bear of Downhill Skiing and more hilarious and imaginative interpretations of Soccer and Ice Hockey. View the beauty of the human form in Leni Reifenstahl's iconic Olympia Diving Sequence (1935). Then on the smutty side of things (to put the XXX in OlympiXXX) we've got a smorgasbord of vintage naughtiness including the pillow fight of the century The Furious Femmes of France (1950s), the skinny dipping bathing beauties of Skirts Ahoy (1940s), the speedy rendezvous of Dick Kortz's A Quickie (1969) and the overdue encore of the naked pogo jumpers of the vintage beefcake short Wheee! (1970s). With more scintillating and sporty surprises and everything screened on 16mm film from our massive archive, you'll never think of the Olympic Games the same again.

Date: Friday, August 5th, 2016 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:

Contest Jitters (B+W, 1950s)
"Any contest gains in excitement when there's a girl on the scene. Whether she's competition or inspiration"

A silly and sexist sports highlights newsreel. Watch ice boat racing, bald head competitions, fishing contests, dolphin basketball, roller skating chimps, coed axe-throwing and a rack of women painted with mud. And listen as the male narrator belittles female athletes and patronizes their efforts outside of a beauty contest, touting "Let's be honest men, what good is beauty to a girl unless there's a man around to appreciate it."

Curious Contests (B+W, 1950, Pete Smith)

A bizarro sports newsreel by the master of the comedy one reeler Pete Smith. This wacky sendoff to the stranger side of sports features a diapering race, pie eating contests, gondola-jousting, kitty shot put, sumo-wrestling, log-splitting races and marathon dancers, all with the ridiculous commentary of the inimitable "Smith named Pete".

It’s Done with Arrows (B+W, 1947)

Girls in short-shorts gear up for archery and do their best to shoot off some arrows. Helpful inter-titles explain the principles of archery while world-renowned archer Howard Hill shoots targets and showboats with some slick archery tricks. The girls pitch in by tossing targets for him.

Babes in Sportland (B+W, 1950s)
They're at the starting gate. They're ready to race. They're...Babies?!? This wacky vintage newsreel "documents" a tiny tot olympics, replete with baby races, toddlers shooting arrows and more infant weirdness than you can shake a dirty diaper at!

Olympia Diving Sequence (B+W, 1936)
Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia documents the Olympic games of 1936, using disorienting angles and slow motion in order to display athletic bodies in motion, detached from all purpose. Often it’s unclear where the bodies are in the context of their environment, which allows the film to focus on their pure, Adonis-like form. Riefenstahl’s film captured the body-centric culture cultivated by the rise of fascism, and made it into an aesthetic principle.

Five Lego Sports Shorts!

Figure Skating (Color, 1986, Lajos Szabo)
A hilarious find from Hungary and part of a series of olympic sports acted out by Legos. The couple on the ice are at the top of their game as they disintegrate into separate blocks, rebuild in different costumes, let out a swarm of penguins and skate out legos hearts, but is it enough showmanship to win the gold?

Downhill Skiing (Color, 1986, Lajos Szabo)

Another Lego sports short! It's time for the downhill skiing competition and one bear is determined to make the grade. These ridiculous shorts are in beautiful color and win the gold in comedy!

Gymnastics (Color, 1986, Lajos Szabo)

It's time for the floor routine and while two of the gals have all the right moves, it's the robot on the floor that really wins the judges acclaim!

Plus! Ice Hockey and Soccer!

Mr. Koumal Carries the Torch (Color, 1968, Gene Dietch)

Part of a series of Czech animations featuring the bulbous-nosed Mr. Koumal. Two separate short cartoons illustrating a variety of human accomplishments in parable form. First, Mr Koumal invents fire (”carries the torch”). He tries to protect his torch from a variety of natural and human hazards. Comedy ensues. Mr. Koumal valiantly attempts to carry the torch to the finish line against many obstacles. The torch is snatched from his grasp at the last minute and another man claims the victory.

The Furious Femmes of France (B+W)

A sexy ladies pillow fight will have to suffice for the wrestling portion of these Olympic games. Watch these half-dressed beauties duke it out on a couch!

A Quickie (B+W, 1969, Dirk Kortz)

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

Skirts Ahoy (B+W, 1940s)

Bathing beauties abound in this vintage nudie cutie. Two women go to the countryside and take their clothes off. They enjoy the freedom and liberty of being naked in nature and swim in a pool of water formed by a creek. Another women joins them and they all swim naked.

Wheee! (Color, 1970s)

A great homoerotic beefcake short. In this high-jumping oddity, a couple of everyday dudes are hanging out naked, throwing back some ice cold sodas before jumping on pogo sticks.


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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Cinematic Synesthesia: A Sensory Overload, an evening of fascinating science docs divulging the secrets of the human senses and a handful of hyper-kinetic experimental shorts designed to overload your senses with barrages of sublime imagery. Enjoy the science spectacular Gateways to the Mind: The Story of the Human Senses (1958) - from the Bell Science series - about the glory and pitfalls of the human senses, hosted by Dr. Frank Baxter and featuring mind-bending sensory-deprivation animation from the legendary Chuck Jones. Find out what happens when your vision is flipped upside down (and you're paid to live like that for two weeks!) in the imported short Living in a Reversed World (1958). Cartoons sing about your senses in the vintage educational primer The Five Senses (1972). Your sensory re-education will be paired with five extraordinary short works that will stimulate all your senses with dazzling torrents of imagery and music. Caroline and Frank Mouris' Oscar-winning Frank Film (1973) is a stunning stop-motion collage animation of nearly 12,000 magazine cutouts and featuring two concurrent soundtracks. Psychedelic animator Vince Collins loses his mind in the eye-popping Fantasy (1973). Canadian experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett's Free-Fall (1964) is a pulsating, eye-popping montage of still and moving images. The hypnotic Tanka (1976) utilizes optical printing to bring the intricate and ominous images of the Tibetan Book of the Dead to life. And the early birds will get a whirlwind tour of vintage Paris at two frames a second in Paul Roubaix's Allegro Ma Troppo (1963). Smell the sounds, taste the visuals, get swept away in cinematic synesthesia. Everything screened on 16mm film from our stock footage archive.

Date: Thursday, August 4th, 2016 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:

Gateways to the Mind (Color, 1958, d. Owen Crump)
All all-out science spectacular! The fifth in the series of edutaining Bell Science films made for television and distributed to classrooms across the world. The first several were directed by Frank Capra with animation by UPA, but this installment - overseen by Jack Warner - is directed by Owen Crump with animation by the legendary Chuck Jones, including a sequence of the little man inside your head that controls your reactions to sensation as well as a pretty bleak sequence illustrating the hallucinogenic side effects of sensory deprivation. Other highlights of this over-the-top spectacular are enormous set pieces of eyes, ears, and other sense organs, as well as a literal sensory circus with clowns and acrobats. Dr. Frank Baxter is our ever-congenial host as he guides us through the fabulous world of the human senses. Did we mention animated hallucinations from Chuck Jones? Due to its length, this 50 minute extravaganza will be shown in 3 segments.

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 (although not in over a year) -it’s that great!

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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.'”

*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.

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).

Living in a Reversed World (B+W, 1958)

An excellent re-rending of our external visual environment, directors and vision specialists Ivo Kohler and Theodore Erismann stitch the viewer into a weird world of screwy visual illusion and corky dystopia via the use of optical illusions.

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:

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.


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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Youth Gone Wild, a night of 16mm short films from the 1950s-1980s about juvenile delinquents - those teenaged hoodlums that shoplift, vandalize, do drugs and wield knives. The RKO Screenliner Teenagers on Trial (1955) warns parents and teens alike that overcrowded classrooms, vacant parenting and societal pressures can all lead kids down a road of juvenile delinquency. Kathy's parents have got to learn to deal with the fact that their 14 year old runaway daughter is dabbling with sex drugs and being a hippie in an episode of Catholic mental hygiene show Insight: No Tears for Kelsey (1969). In Jojo's Blues (1982), directed by Peter Wallach, Jojo is just a claymation puppet that wants to belong, but the initiation rites in the local gang are at too high a price to pay. And in McGruff on Personal Property (1987), McGruff the crime dog barks about respecting other people's property and (as always) narcing on your vandal friends. Also screening will be the noirish story of a tough teenage boy Boy With a Knife (1956) starring B-movie legend Richard Widmark and Chuck Connors and The Bully (1951), a classic mental hygiene film featuring Chick Allen-school bully! Early birds will see the heartbreaking short The Boy Who Liked Deer (1975). Plus more JD surprises!

Date: Friday, August 12th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Featuring:

Boy With a Knife (B+W, 1956)
Narrated by film noir legend Richard Widmark, this educational film makes juvenile delinquency seem positively benign compared to today’s problem youth. Some great campy moments.

Teenagers on Trial (B+W, 1955)

An RKO Screenliner "documentary", Teenagers on Trial illustrates the endless ways that youth can get wrapped up in trouble in contemporary society. Whether it’s overcrowded schools or overworked parents, this film shows the causes of delinquency and the ways it can be remedied through a campy dramatization of a young man stealing a car.

Jojo's Blues (Color, 1982)

Peter Wallach directs this claymation tale of peer pressure. Jojo wants to get in with the hip gang of boys, but when he's pressured into vandalism, he's not sure that the gang is all it's cracked up to be.

The Bully (B+W, 1951)

Social misfit and malcontent Chick Allen, the school bully, holds an unquenchable grudge against all that is good - and smaller - the kids in his class. Chick is constantly grabbing people by the shirt and throwing them to the ground. He wants to mess up the class picnic, but his plans are leaked by Skipper, one of his small lackeys. The class decides to thwart Chick and, at the same time, offer him a last chance to bond with society.

McGruff on Personal Property (Color, 1987)
Everybody's favorite crime-fighting man in a dog-suit explains the basics of personal property and vandalism to kids.

No Tears for Kelsey(Color, 1969)

Another heavy-handed episode of the Catholic mental hygiene show Insight. Fourteen-year old Kathy Kelsey has run away from home and been taken to juvenile hall for truancy. The officer explains to her parents that she is not the same girl who left home, she's a hippie now. This little lass has used pot, possibly LSD, and could even be pregnant. Co-starring Dynasty regular Lloyd "Cecil Colby" Bochner and Deborah Winters, the star of LSD freakout feature Blue Sunshine.

For the Early Birds:

The Boy Who Liked Deer (Color, 1975)

In this dramatic and realistic story a boy learns -- in very personal and painful terms -- the emotional cost of vengeful destruction and vandalism. Jason is a boy of many facets. Cool ‘wiseguy’ at school, thoughtless graffiti-writer and vandal with his friends, he shows great gentleness and affection for the animals at the local deer park. Written by Dinitia McCarthy.


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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Scientific Psychedelia, a program of eye-popping short science and nature films from the 1920s-1980s that capture nature's most surreal, kaleidoscopic and magnificent moments. From microscopic creatures and processes to a space landscape, to the intricacies of animal movement, these films will open your eyes to the natural wonders that lay within and beyond our own eyesight. The evening includes experimental space explorations by Scott Bartlett, cephalopodic inquiries by David Attenborough, mind-blowing hydro-animation from visionary Philip Stapp, evangelical science from the Moody Institute, mid-century color micro-photography of protozoa and more, all on 16mm film from the archive. Dive into the colorful world of cephalopods with David Attenborough and watch as cuttle fish, octopi, and squid put on nature's electric light show in the stunning print of Aliens from Inner Space (1983). Brilliant animator Philip Stapp teams up with the World Health Organization for the staggering animated short Water: A Human Right (1961), containing breathtaking imagery, science, and humanitarianism. Avant-garde filmmaker Scott Bartlett brings us a metaphysical trip to the moon utilizing superimpositions, stroboscopic effects, and hallucinatory imagery in Moon 1969 (1969). Photographic pioneer Roman Vishniac brings us under the microscope to see the world of Protozoa: Single-Celled Animals (1957). Award-wining filmmaker Carroll Ballard’s (The Black Stallion) abstract film Crystallization (1975) explores the intricate and dazzling formation of crystals in liquids all set to an innovative electronic sound score. Basic physical principles are the focus of the antique science short Invisible Forces (1920s), and the visuals of capillary action in sugarcubes and bubbles will tantalize and mesmerize. Get a glimpse under the skin with the ghostly images of Moving X-Rays (1950).

Date: Thursday, August 11th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Featuring:

Aliens from Inner Space (Color, 1983)
A rare David Attenborough documentary never released on DVD! This stunning BBC show demonstrates nature's electric light show through the examination of those fascinating cephalopods the cuttle fish, the squid, and the octopus. Watch as these chromatophore-laden mollusks evade their predators, hypnotize their prey and communicate using specialized light cells within their own invertebrate bodies.

Water: A Human Right (Color, 1961)
Animator Phillip Stapp delivers with this piece commissioned by the United Nations and approved by the World Health Organization. Another Journal Films Inc production, this documentary highlights Stapp’s interesting animation style combining and contrasting live-action footage and photographs with pointillist inspired drawing. These airy images depict the problem of water rights, water shortage, and the needs of our ever-growing world with snappy style. Stapp is well known for his work in animation with films like Boundary Lines (1946) which introduced his ‘evolving scroll’ efforts and work with music and lines. Water is a retro reminder of our problem with life’s juice that has not yet subsided. In a new world with 7 billion people, this film’s relevance is very contemporary to our time.

Moon 1969 (Color, 1969)

"Moon 1969 is a beautiful, eerie, haunting film, all the more wonderful for the fact we do not once see the moon: only the manifestation of its powers here on earth, the ebb and flow of the waters.. fiery rainbows into a cloudy sky... men and rockets transformed into shattering crystals... creating a picture if the cosmos in continual transformation."-- Gene Youngblood, Los Angeles Times

Pioneering San Francisco film and video artist Scott Bartlett created a series of evocative and revolutionary films in the mid sixties fusing film and video techniques that pushed the limits of film and video in unexpected ways. With Moon 1969 Bartlett explores the sensory limits of the viewer ultimately taking them on a visceral, stroboscopic experience.

Protozoa: One Celled Animals (Color, 1957)
This film, photographed by one of the masters of color photomicrography, Dr. Roman Vishniac,

vividly portrays the variety and life functions of one-celled animals. Photographer, biologist, and art historian, Roman Vishniac is most widely remembered for his photographic documentation of pre-Holocaust Jewish culture in Central and Eastern Europe. Vishniac also contributed to the development of photo microscopy (photographs taken through microscopic lens) and time-lapse photography.

Moving X-Rays (B+W, 1950)

For more than a century, X-ray images have illuminated the workings and anomalies of the human body and other objects of mystery, but they still have the ability to fascinate. Director John Kieran's Kaleidoscope was a 15-minute documentary series that aired from 1949 to 1952. Kieran's folksy but learned approach gives Moving X-Rays gives a comfy sense of wonderment at the eerie beauty of these familiar images.

Invisible Forces(B+W, 1920s)

Centennial Science! In Invisible Forces, surface tension and capillary action are demonstrated using sugarcubes, soap bubbles and a couple of genuine ordinary people of the 1920s, whose film careers ended here, we’re pretty sure.

Snowflakes (Color, 1956)
"Snow, given to us by the hand of god"

Brilliant Kodachrome snowflake crystals from the evangelical Moody Institute of Science. God made these!

Crystallization (Color, 1975)

Directed by award-wining filmmaker Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion) this hypnotic non-narrative film explores the formation of crystals in liquids through the electron microscope under polarized light all set to an early 70s electronic sound score. Screened at the SF International Film Festival and winner of the Golden Gate Award in 1975.

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 200 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 and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson's Final Exam: Shockucation's Last Hurrah, the 41st and final in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. After 40 months of sex, drugs, and schlock and roll, we're retiring everyone's favorite educational programming with one final explosion of weird! Teen girls need to watch out for intruders, even when they inexplicably become your instructor of Self-Defense for Girls (1969). In the evangelical Charlie Chaplin rip-off Charlie Churchman and the Clowns (1960s), a proselytizing pastor goes to the carnival in search of new souls and encounters the most terrifying clown in cinema history and crucifies a ventriloquist dummy. Guardiana: Safety Woman saves you from a stove fire and from your dad's gun in Harm Hides at Home (1974). Or learn about poisons with Egbert, one puppet boy with a penchant for poisoning himself over and over again in Watch Out for Poison (1970s). Another disgusting puppet learns all about dental hygiene in Big Mouth Goes to the Dentist (1979). Mike Miller is a good Mormon Boy, but will he be lured by fast cars and wild women in the hilarious Measure of a Man (1962) from Mormon-mental hygiene pioneer Wetzel Whitaker. NFL great and needlepoint enthusiast Rosey Grier sings "It's Alright to Cry" from Free to Be...You and Me (1974) for all those boys questioning the masculinity of emotions. Three pubescent girls lament about their underdeveloped bodies in an uncomfortable musical number "The Itty Bitty Titty Committee" from Junior High School (1978). With door prizes, other surprises and more shockucation for the early birds, it's your last chance to learn your lesson!

Date: Friday, August 19th, 2016 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:

Charlie Churchman and the Clowns (B+W, 1960, Mel White)A pathetic attempt to make evangelism funny and hip for the kids; Charlie Churchman was a proselytizing ripoff of Charlie Chaplin. The star of several films, in this installment the circus is in town and Charlie has been tasked with getting a bunch of clowns and carnies to come to church. Co-starring the most disturbing clown you have ever seen (pictured above and soon to appear in your nightmares). The finale of the film includes a reenactment of the life and death of Jesus demonstrated with a ventriloquist dummy and left the audience screaming!

Guardiana: Safety Woman - Harm Hides at Home (Color, 1974)

Karen Kingsley is an accomplished architect and a volunteer crossing guard who - after an extraterrestrial run-in with some friendly safety-loving aliens - is transformed into a calamity-fighting superhero (as if she needed another part-time job). When children in mortal danger cry out for help, she dons her silver lamé jumpsuit, her frisbee-looking shield and a wand that looks like a sex-toy and transports to the rescue. Watch out for that fire on the stove and that gun in your dad's file cabinet, or don't and let Guardiana give you a nice long lecture after saving your life.

Self-Defense for Girls (Color, 1969)

A screamingly funny, over-the top training film for teen girls. We begin with some terrifying situations for our young heroines, accompanied by slow-motion, exaggerated horror music and some incredible over and underacting. Then, as we are exploring the terrors of the home invasion, the perp suddenly becomes our teacher (accompanied by a Jerri Blank look-alike), and we learn how to take control of any situation! Groin and eyes ladies, always jab 'em in the groin and eyes!

"The Itty Bitty Titty Committee"from Junior High School (Color, 1978, excerpt)

As if Junior High wasn't awful enough, imagine adding song and dance numbers about the most awkward aspects of your life and changing body! In this hilarious excerpt, the song and dance numbers tread into uncomfortable territory when the whole girl's locker room dances around 3 gals in the "Itty Bitty Titty Committee". It's an epic camp musical masterpiece!

Measure of a Man (Color, 1962)
Nobody does a drinking and driving scare film quite like the Mormons! Mike Miller is a good boy with a thoughtful and anxious mother who is none too pleased that he's going out driving with bad boys Hal and Blaine. They love "wild" girls, fast cars and drinking beer; and everywhere they go, crazy New Orleans jazz underscores their every move. Will Mike be able to hold his own with their wild ways, even turn them around to his square way of thinking or will he be pressured into drinking and necking the night away? The interior monologues will leave you speechless with gems like "I wonder how come mothers know so much" and "I don't know much about wild girls... might be educational, though." Directed by Mormon-educational film pioneer Wetzel Whitaker, who worked as an animator for Di$ney for 20 years before becoming the director of the BYU Motion Picture Studio.

Watch out for Poison (Color, 1970s)
One puppet family has a penchant for poisoning their young puppet son, Egbert. Poor Egbert has to be poisoned four times before his clueless parents finally decide to poison-proof their home.

Big Mouth Goes to the Dentist (Color, 1979)

If you are nothing but a giant mouth puppet with legs, you had better make sure your teeth aren't yellow and your breath doesn't stink, but Big Mouth has got better things to do than deal with dental hygiene. Hopefully, Dr. Jules can set Big Mouth on the right path so he can share his giant pearly whites with everyone!

It’s Alright To Cry from Free To Be...You And Me (Color, 1974)

Rosey Grier was an NFL star turned Renaissance Man, presidential bodyguard, singer, actor, needlepoint enthusiast, and Christian Minister. In this comforting ballad, “The Gentle Giant” teaches girls and boys alike that a little tearfest never hurt anyone, and even one of the Fearsome Foursome can be “sad and grumpy, down in the dumpy.”

About Free To Be You...And Me

Finding a dirth of positive, modern-thinking children’s literature and programming, Marlo Thomas (That Girl) set out to gather some of the biggest names at the time to teach the new generation of children about race and gender equality, caring, sharing, overcoming stereotypes, self-sufficiency, the validity of boys owning dolls, and the brotherhood of man. First a record, then a book, and in 1974, Free To Be You And Me became an Emmy-Winning television broadcast. With singing, dancing, cartoons and puppets! The magic of Free To Be You and Me was its effortless way of making heavy ideas of feminism, consumerism and understanding palatable and entertaining for children and adult-children alike.

For the Early Birds:

And Then It Happened (Color, 1972)
Produced and directed by Gene Starbecker, the “father of the school bus safety film” this classic cult film features lots of noisy, wisecracking kids and a catastrophe that has permanently scarred (!) anyone who has seen it in school over 30 years ago. Starbecker produced over 970 documentaries and 300 television programs (including the gritty Broderick Crawford cop show “Highway Patrol”). The story concerns two horrific bus accidents and the rowdy behavior of the kids aboard that led to the deadly outcomes. There are knife-fights and dogs, smoking, pill-popping and even mice on the loose! The bus drivers are played by veteran actors Josh Mostel (son of Zero Mostel) and Peggy Pope (9 to 5), still early in their careers.

Oddball Films welcomes artist, musician, and filmmaker Zach Von Joo for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. This month, Zach Von Joo will be joining us on the Oddball Cinestage presenting several of his recent films in tandem with evocative works from the archive that resonate on similar film frequencies. Von Joo's approach to filmmaking ranges from the hyper-kinetic to the pensive and dreamy with an ethereal feeling of other-timeliness and vintage nostalgia. Von Joo utilizes a variety of cinematic techniques and mediums to achieve his multi-layered cine-poetry including shooting in 8mm, 16mm, and video and using optical printing, hand processing, superimposition, kaleidoscopic editing, and digital manipulation. His work has been screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, The Roxie and Secret Alley, and now he's taking on Oddball with a slew of secrets to experimental filmmaking. The evening's films include Empire Row, a hyper-speed survey of condo-culture intermixed with found footage of glamourous showgirls and ballet dancers, Behold! featuring a barrage of thousands of still images cultivated from 16mm film (many from the Oddball collection) over a period of years, The Bells of Spring, a film which draws upon kitsch, ritual, and religion with a soundtrack composed of the gentle ringing of church bells, and Bequeath the Heart, a personal film of uncovering the secrets of the past and establishing connections with the departed. 16mm selections from the archive include Kenneth Anger's semi-Satanic cinematic ceremony Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969), Arthur Lipsett's Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), a culturally disruptive montage of still images and his first film nominated for an Academy Award, Caroline and Frank Mouris' Oscar-winning Frank Film (1973) is a stunning stop-motion collage animation of nearly 12,000 images cut out of magazines, and Ken Rudolph takes us through the history of Art in eight pulsing minutes in Gallery (1969) with electronic music sound score by Clockwork Orange composer Wendy Carlos.

Date: Thursday, August 18th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Films by Zach Von Joo:

Empire Row
A ritualized film designed to rewrite the nightmare (then and now) invading the Bay Area. Empire Row began as a sequence of still frames of the most dehumanizing architecture one could find in San Francisco. Through optical printing, hand processing and digital manipulation, the filmmaker embedded kinetic images of beauty, glamor and destruction into the framework of stop-motion architecture. The result is a ritual film in which the depressing uniformity of condos and projects is subsumed and transformed in a fiery comet of beauty. Martin Rev was chosen for the soundtrack for its trance-inducing sense of urban drama.

The Bells of Spring

Easter trash set to church bells. New Orleans, Kodachrome.

Behold!

A swarm of ephemera. A barrage of thousands of stills taken from 16mm film, many having passed through the doors of Oddball Films.

Bequeath the Heart

Personal history reassembled through lines of sight and the alchemical miracle of optical printing. “Blood is scrutinized through time. My father’s gaze and mine are bound together using optical printing and hand processing. Time changed to steam and a new essence extracted.”

About the Artist:
Zach Von Joo is a visual artist, writer, musician, filmmaker and shy person. His films have screened at the San Francisco Underground Film Festival, The Roxie, The Secret Alley and occasional exhibits in back alleys, driveways and other somewhat less conventional spaces. Von Joo spent many years as a touring musician and underground artist in Portland. He holds degrees in Cinema and English Literature. Somehow or other he manages to keep the wolves at the door.

16mm Films From the Archive:

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!

Gallery (Color, 1969)

The fastest Art History course you’ll ever take. A pulsing, speedy slideshow of some of the most important pieces of art, shown chronologically from DaVinci to Dali. With a Moog soundtrack by infamous Clockwork Orange composer and synth Goddess Wendy Carlos. Directed by Ken Rudolph.

Invocation of My Demon Brother (Color, 1969)

In Invocation of My Demon Brother filmmaker Kenneth Anger creates an altered state of consciousness through the use of cinematic and psycho-spiritual magick techniques.

The film is described by notorious avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger as “An assault on the sensorium” features“underworld powers gathering at a midnight mass to shadow forth Lord Lucifer in a gathering of spirits”. Invocation is a quintessential late 1960 freak-out, containing a montage of drug use, pagan rituals, an albino, stock footage of the Vietnam War, the Rolling Stones in concert and abstract imagery all played back at various speeds. The film is accompanied by a repetitive, droning Moog musical score created by Mick Jagger. In the words of avant-garde film critic P. Adams Sitney “It is Anger's most metaphysical film: here he eschews literal connections, makes images jar against one another, and does not create a center of gravity through which the collage is to be interpreted... the burden of synthesis falls upon the viewer.” Filmed in San Francisco at the Straight Theater in the Haight and the William Westerfield house on Fulton where Anger resided for a brief time. The film stars Anton LeVay, founder of the Church of Satan and Bobby Beausoleil a former member of the Manson family.

Very Nice, Very Nice (B+W, 1961)

In Very Nice, Very Nice, Lipsett disrupts the representational value of documentary image and sound, moving beyond the genre's aesthetic codes of truth and reliability. Using snippets of film and audio, the result is a sardonic re-reading of 1950s consumerism, mass media and popular culture. Nominated for an Academy Award.



About Oddball Films

Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 A Century of Drag Cinema, a night of 16mm film shorts from the 1910s-1970s demonstrating the progression of drag in film from a mere comedy gag to a transgressive movement. Drag got its start in pictures early on as a typical comedy gag with most of the major comedy stars of the day cross-dressing for laughs. See Charlie Chaplin in one of the earliest uses of drag in film, as he shaves his trademark mustache and dons a lovely frock to get a part in a film in the Keystone silent comedy The Female Impersonator AKA The Masquerader (1914). Gender bending is the norm in the imagined future of Hal Roach's What's the World Coming To? (1926). Amour Pour Une Femme (1950) is a quick stag-gag, with a dressing room full of lovely ladies, but they may not all really be ladies. Bugs and Daffy get into semantics and Bugs slips into ladies' clothes in one of the best Bugs Bunny shorts, Chuck Jones' Rabbit Seasoning (1952). Woody Woodpecker uses drag to get back at a horny landlord, then eats him out of house and home in Chew Chew Baby (1945). As homosexuality and gender-transgression began to come more into public view, drag became a counter-cultural movement and began to reflect the real demographic of gender-benders. The camptastic Sinderella (1962) retells an age-old fairy tale with a cross-dressing twist for a new generation. The frank and entertaining documentary Black Cap Drag (1969) takes an in-depth look at two British drag performers in 1960s London as they discuss their lives and careers and sing a few Barbra and Marlene numbers along the way. Experimental filmmaker Coni Beeson gives us an intimate and poetic look at Drag (1970). With incredible costumery in the 1969 Halloween Show at the Levee from our very own San Francisco, drag legend Charles Pierce performs his own unique brand of comedy and music from The Charles Pierce Review (1969), a snippet of dragged up Homoerotica (1970s), and tons of other dragalicious bonuses! Early birds will be treated to the unaired, unsold pilot for the TV show Some Like it Hot (1961) with Tina Louise in Marilyn's role. Empowering and entertaining, you'll want this night to drag on forever! Everything screened on 16mm film with silent prints courtesy of the Jenni Olson Queer Film Archive.

Date: Friday, August 26th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco (map)

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

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/

"You're born naked, the rest is Drag"

-Ru Paul Charles

Highlights Include:

The Masquerader AKA The Female Impersonator (B+W, 1914)

One of the earliest instances of drag in film. A Keystone Comedy written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and produced by Mack Sennett over a hundred years ago, also starring disgraced silent star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. A film director hires Chaplin in an acting role for his film. Chaplin ruins several takes and gets kicked off the set. He returns the next day in full drag and wins over the director with his beauty and coquettishness.
Print courtesy of the Jenni Olson Queer Film Archive.

What's the World Coming To? (1926, B+W) Watch these gender-bending screwballs in this rare slapstick short by Hal Roach. In the future deliveries are made by blimp while men dress like women and women like men. Watch them marry in this gender bending screwball short!

Print courtesy of the Jenni Olson Queer Film Archive.

Sinderella (B+W & Color, 1962)

This amateur film produced by "Lorelei" is a faithful reenactment of the Brother's Grimm Cinderella.. except with a handful of lovely drag queens playing all the parts. A rare document of the San Francisco drag scene in the early 60s, this gem is like a long-lost step sister to Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures. Don't miss the amazingly cheezy production values, awesome wigs, and high-handed bitch slapping that blows Disney right out of the water. Poor Sinderella's hair gets a fabulous makeover when she's transformed! In B+W and color.

Chew Chew Baby (B+W, 1945)

The infamously notorious and annoying Woody Woodpecker manages to get himself evicted from a boarding house run by proprietor Wally Walrus. Later lonely Wally runs an ad in the local newspaper looking for a sweetheart. Woody shows up in drag at Wally's place and eats him out of house and home! A laugh riot!

Amour Pour Un Femme (B+W, 1950)

This burlesque-like comedy short reveals a lesbian encounter with another woman in the nightclub dressing room is less lesbian than it seems!

Black Cap Drag (Color, 1969)
It's London, 1969 and the world is in full groovy swing. At the New Black Cap in Camden, two performers steal the show, and reveal themselves and their stories to the viewer. Full of heart as well as humor, fun and fabulousness, Black Cap Drag is a remarkable and rare document of two men who can't wait to get dressed like Barbra Streisand and Marlene Dietrich. One of the first queer safe spaces in England - at a time when homosexuality was still illegal - the Black Cap recently closed its doors after five decades, as its building is sleighted for development, prompting protestors to rally for the iconic venue. A tribute to the dearly departed night club will be held in August at a BFI retrospective featuring a screening of this film, digitally transferred and provided by Oddball Films (we will be watching the original 16mm print)

Rabbit Seasoning (Color, 1952)

Daffy Duck tries to match wits with Bugs Bunny as they debate whether it’s rabbit hunting season or duck hunting season. Elmer Fudd is totally witless in the exchange, especially when Bugs employs some tried-and-true cross-dressing to throw the hunter off his trail.

Drag (B+W, 1970)

A poetic film by sexperimental maven Coni Beeson. In a small bedroom, a pair of legs puts on tights. Then we see the torso and the head of a man buttoning up a striped dress. A second man gets into a dress. The first man talks into the camera motioning around his face. The men help each other to put on high heels and lipstick. They dance together and one man wrestles the other onto the bed.

Plus! Tons of Vintage San Francisco Footage and a few more fabulous surprises!

For the Early Birds:

Some Like It Hot (b+w, 1961)

Super rare TV pilot (un-sold and un-aired) attempted to franchise the all time classic Billy Wilder film as a weekly program. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis appear at the opening before undergoing plastic surgery (the mob is still after them), re-emerging as “look-alikes” Vic Damone and Dick Patterson. For some reason, they continue to dress in drag and play with the all-girl band… Tina Louise (of Gilligan’s Isle fame) replaces Marylin Monroe and a bit part by George “I wish my brother George was here” Liberace.




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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 103, a monthly evening of newly discovered finds, old favorites and rarities from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 103rd program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 103: Cinemania, is an offbeat look at the origins and bizarre expressions of cinema through historical inventions, experimental innovations and hand-made films throughout the ages with a blend of documentary, animation, early cinema rarities and even historic smut. We start off with a fascinating documentary The Origins of the Motion Picture (1955) examining cinema history from Leonardo de Vinci to Thomas Edison featuring oddities such as the Thaumatrope, the Phenakistiscope, Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope and more. We follow with the early cinema experiments of Georges Méliès in excerpts from The Inn Where No Man Rests (1903) and The Witch's Revenge (1903) and Tex Avery's Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938) where our duckster editor makes movie mayhem by creating a masterpiece using stock footage to enrage his boss! Lumiere’s First Picture Show (1895-1897) is a compilation of the earliest films ever made by French cinema pioneers the Lumière Brothers as well as a vintage look at the Lumières' patented cinematograph, a combination camera, projector, and film printer. Witness Camera Magic (1943), a rare curio by notorious oddball photographer Arthur “Weegee” Felig demonstrating a variety of camera techniques used to produce special effects. Moving on to the 70s, we take a cue from Stan Brakhage, Len Lye, and other avant-garde film makers in Michael and Mimi Warshaw’s How to Make a Movie Without a Camera (1972) which encourages kids and adults alike to make beautiful movies by scratching and drawing directly on film and animating films using hinged cut-outs, clay, toys, and hand-painted film. Robert Swarthe's Oscar-nominated Kick Me (1975)- painted directly onto the film - cleverly takes its meta-post-modernism to new dimensions. Bombay Movies (1977) is an inside look at the wild and extravagant world of Bollywood films in the 1970s. Hop on board for what some say is America's first hardcore porn, the notorious silent stag film A Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (1915) and try not to scream at the world's first pornographic cartoon Eveready Hardon in Buried Treasure (1928).

Date: Thursday, August 25th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Origins of the Motion Picture (B+W, 1955, 20 min)

This fascinating documentary describes the events leading to the perfection of motion pictures, and examines the technological development, from the theories of Leonardo Da Vinci to the inventions of Thomas Edison. The film examines reliefs on Indian temple walls, DaVinci’s Camera Obscura, the Magic Lantern, the many facets of moving image inventions from the Thaumatrope, or “wonder turner”, the Phenakistiscope, Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope, the Zoetrope, Edison’s, Kinetograph and many more evolutionary moving image projection devices. Produced by the U.S. Navy in collaboration with The Library of Congress, The Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, Thomas Alva Edison Foundation and the George Eastman House of Photography.

History of the Cinema (Color, 1957, 10 min)
The History of the Cinema is an undeniable classic of animation, very British in its humor and very tied in with its period. With an irrepressibly optimistic narrator and great wit it takes us from the cavemen daubing on the rock, the pinhole camera, through the early silent movie era, and eventually to the rise of television. John Halas' 1957 movie also manages to convey facts in an amusing way. Thus we learn why Hollywood was so good for film-making (sun, dependable sun) and the vital role the censor paid in movie history - essentially he snipped away all the good bits of film and left the audience with the rest - and even the fads designed to withstand the impact of the little box in the home.

Buried Treasure (B+W, 1928, 10 min)
The Granddaddy of pornographic cartoons, persistent rumors suggest that Max Fleischer (Betty Boop and others), Paul Terry (of TerryToons) and Budd Fisher (Mutt & Jeff) were responsible for this bawdy masterpiece. The legendary porno cartoon with a boogie woogie piano soundtrack depicting the unlikely adventures of the perpetually aroused title character (Eveready Hardon) with, among others, a man, a woman, and a cow. You’ll laugh and the guys may even scream!

Daffy Duck in Hollywood (B+W, 1938, Tex Avery, 7 min)

Watch Daffy Duck wreak havoc on a movie set by cutting and splicing together various clips into finished product of a movie contains nothing but newsreel titles and clips surrealist style. An anarchistic and avant garde masterpiece!

Camera Magic (B+W, 1943, 10 min)

This rare curio by notorious oddball photographer Arthur “Weegee” Felig demonstrates a variety of camera techniques used to produce special effects with an ordinary 16mm motion picture camera without employing special equipment. A man moves to embrace a woman and we watch her vanish. On the beach a woman smiles while her decapitated head lies next to her. More offbeat scenes demonstrate tips and tricks for the amateur and professional alike. Wacky, weird and nothing like it in the entire Castle film collection this came from!

Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (B+W, 1915, 10 min)

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.

Lumiere’s First Picture Show (B+W, 1895-1897, 15 min)

A compilation of short silent films by French cinema pioneers the Lumière brothers shot in the early days of cinema. The shorts are accompanied by informative text that gives background information on each film, as well as historical context with regards to filmmaking and the Lumière company. Shorts include the famous "L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat" (1896) ("The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat"), "La sortie des usines Lumière" (1895) ("Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory"), and a vintage look at the Lumières' patented cinematograph, a combination camera, projector, and film printer.

Melange de Méliès! 10 min

The Inn Where No Man Rests (1903, b&w) Devilry with inanimate objects was Melies stock-in-trade. It's bad enough that our weary traveler is tormented out of a peaceful night by his boots, the bed and just about any object with which Melies can play tricks. The ruckus brings the other guests and things really get out of hand. The Witch's Revenge (1903, b&w) In trouble with the king for practicing witchcraft, a sorcerer tries to conjure his way out of trouble. His offer to magic up the woman of the ruler's his dreams by way of wizardry goes absurdly awry.

personal attacks.

How to Make a Movie Without a Camera (Color, 1972, 6 min)

Taking a cue from Stan Brakhage, Len Lye, and other avant-garde film makers, Michael and Mimi Warshaw encourage kids to make beautiful movies by scratching and drawing directly on film. Using just these simple techniques and a catchy soundtrack, the Warshaws show that it doesn’t take a big studio budget or an all-star cast to craft a movie that makes more sense than Inception.

“Michael and Mimi Warshaw’s film is a non-stop sampling of the wonders of found footage and hand-made movie techniques. The film incorporates techniques such as scratching, acetate inks, food coloring, felt tip pens, bleaching, rub-ons, and various stock or found footage elements creating an instructional yet experimental film. Famed avant garde filmmakers such as Len Lye, Stan Brakhage, and dadist Hans Richter created entire bodies of innovative, abstract cameraless film using direct physical techniques such as these.”

Kick Me (Color, 1975, Robert Swarthe, 8 min)

An Oscar-nominated meta-cinema gem gets a lot of mileage (or should we say footage?) out of a mysterious pair of animated legs, an adventure within the frames of celluloid and ultimately its deconstruction of the medium itself. Drawn directly on 35mm film, Kick Me is a stunning example of the “direct animation” technique popularized by Norman McLaren and Stan Brakhage.

Bombay Movies (Color, 1977, 15 min)
The entire output of the American film industry is the merest trickle in comparison with India, where the original Moguls release many times more films each year than the Americans can ever dream of. Studios in Bombay’s Hollywood, Bollywood, churn out a smorgasbord of musicals and exploitation films on a daily basis, serving the needs of India’s vast moviegoing public. Follow mega-star Vinod Khanna as he introduces American audiences to cinema, Indian-style.

Curator Biography:


About Oddball Films

San Francisco's strangest film archive and microcinema, Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 brings you Better Living Through Di$ney - Educational Shorts from the Magic Kingdom. While obviously more well known for their animated features, Di$ney (as Walt Di$ney Educational Media) has been making educational primers since the 1940s with audacious subject matter like menstruation, venereal diseases, war propaganda, drug abuse and more. This program features high/lowlights of Di$ney's educational side with shocking shorts, some animated, some live-action and all Di$ney. In the notorious pseudo-science film White Wilderness: Lemmings (1958), Di$ney filmmakers manufactured a "documentary" about lemming behavior that not only cost dozens of rodents their lives, it changed public perception about the little furballs forever. A goofy cowboy gets pressured into smoking at The Smokey Mountain Dude Ranch in Smoking: The Choice is Yours (1981). In VD Attack Plan (1973), a cartoon syphilitic sergeant directs his VD troops into battle against ignorant humans. Benny's a teen that's got it all, but he might lose it if he trades his friends for steroids in Benny and the 'Roids (1988). Learn all about growing up, from an animated embryonic cycle to adolescent pimples in the zippy musical short Steps Towards Maturity and Growth (1968). From the same series, we learn about The Social Side of Health (1969), including an animated drug trip and more zippy songs, and Physical Fitness and Good Health (1969). Di$ney also got into the war effort with several propaganda cartoons including Don@ld Duck's surreal Nazi nightmare Der Fuehrer's Face (1943) and The Grain That Built a Hemisphere (1943) touting the nearly magic properties of corn. Two dopey guys try to explain computers to a clueless teacher in the dated cheesefest Computers: The Truth of the Matter (1983). Plus, you can learn How to Catch a Cold (1951)! With even more surprises in store, you'll never think of Di$ney the same way again!

Date: Friday, September 2nd, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Smoking: The Choice is Yours (Color, 1981)
This goofy anti-smoking cartoon is making its Oddball debut! Edgar is a cowboy who just got a job at the Smokey Mountain Dude Ranch, a haven for outdoorsy tobacconistas run by the Hirschfeldesque Mrs. Hackwell. With everybody smoking, Edgar can't think of a good reason why not to until a badass hot air balloonist teaches him a few things about a smoke free life.

White Wilderness: Lemmings (Color, 1958)
The notorious and heartbreaking segment of Di$ney's Oscar-winning feature documentary White Wilderness that has led to a persistent myth of the mass-suicide of lemmings. No one is sure where the filmmakers got the idea that lemmings love to leap to their deaths, but they managed to import a small population of lemmings to Alberta for the filming, ultimately throwing the furry little rodents off cliffs to drown in "the ocean" (which was actually a river) and influencing public sentiment about the little guys for decades to come. In reality, lemmings don't commit mass-suicides, although in search for new territories, they have been known to accidentally fall of cliffs and drown.

VD Attack Plan (Technicolor, 1973)
“Yes, it’s true. Walt D*sney Productions has made a significant contribution to the war against VD. “VD Attack Plan” – A fully animated Walt D*sney 16mm motion picture.” states the brochure accompanying this 16mm educational film. VD Attack Plan had some forward thinking and enlightening approaches (not just for D*sney but everyone else producing this type of film in 1973) to the subject of sexually transmitted diseases including promotion of condoms (instead of abstinence) and the fact that VD can be spread through same sex couplings. This “war against disease “ film doesn’t miss a beat-even showcasing some of the graphic effects of the disease in action. In brilliant Technicolor, just like you’d want it to be.

Der Fuehrer's Face (B+W, 1942)

A very different Don@ld short than you've ever seen, in this wartime oddity, Don@ld wakes up as a Nazi. He must wake up early, eat very little and work overtime in a Nazi artillery factory all while german soldiers bark orders at him through a Nazi megaphone. After mere minutes of screwing the tops on artillery shells, he suffers a psychotic break to various refrains of the Spike Jonze titular song. After some psychedelic SS insanity, he's overjoyed to wake up from his terrible dream in good old America again.

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!

Benny and the ‘Roids (Color, 1988)
Benny has got it all; a great looking girlfriend, a best bud and the High School cred. of being on the football team. But his teammates pick on his puniness and even as he self-indulgently videotapes himself working out, the progress just isn’t fast enough. The next logical step, ask the beefiest, sketchiest looking guy at the gym where to score some steroids. How long can Benny keep his perfect life with his dirty little secret, and will it end up being worth it? As it is a Di$ney production, I’m sure you can guess it won’t be, but you’ll still enjoy your front row ticket to the RAGE!

Steps Towards Maturity and Growth (Color, 1969)
Another coming of age cartoon classic brought to you by Walt Di$ney and the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company. Mostly animated with an animated embryonic cycle and several jazzy musical numbers. It emphasizes the need for an equilateral triangle of physical, mental and social health.

How To Catch A Cold (Color, 1951)
A highly entertaining PSA in lovely Technicolor, produced as a collaboration between Kleenex (not yet a household name, let alone a genericized product) and Disn*y. Distributed freely to schools, it was seen by millions in its day, but now qualifies as a lost treasure.

Computers: The Truth of the Matter (Color, 1983)
A goofy live-action intro to computers from Walt Di$ney Educational Services. Teacher is having a tough time with the new computer club that she's in charge of. Luckily two dopey guys - the saintly (and portly) Angelo and the no-good Luke who looks like a used car salesman - magically materialize to show her the good, the bad and the awkward in computing.

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.

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 Buster Keaton Rides Again, a night of 16mm film shorts from the 1920s-1960s dedicated to that inimitable silent film star Buster Keaton with silent gems, terrific talkies, rarities, commercials, and an intimate documentary inside the mind of the comedic giant. A vaudevillian from the age of five, Keaton was given the name "Buster" by Harry Houdini and began his film career with Fatty Arbuckle at the age of 21, directing and starring in his own films a couple of years later. The films from this silent era are his most enduring--and are inventive, visionary, and as funny as anything that has followed. Unlike his contemporaries Chaplin or Harold Lloyd, Keaton does not mug; he does not implore his audience; he watches calmly along with the audience as chaos unfolds and reacts with his trademark smarts, physical skill and elegance. Films include Cops (1922), a Kafka-esque story of a man on the run from the entire police force; The Balloonatic (1923) with gags galore, this film finds Buster bumbling through each frame, finally whisked away by a rogue hot air balloon and dropped into the woods to fend for himself; Grand Slam Opera (1936) with Keaton performing his juggling act over the radio; the rare documentary Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965) which gives you a rare look behind the scenes of his trademark slapstick style a mere year before his death, and The Railrodder (1965), a modern salute to classic Buster made by The National Film Board of Canada (1965). Plus, Vintage Keaton Commercials and early birds will get the opportunity to see an episode of The Misadventures of Buster Keaton (1950s). Everything screened on 16mm film from our stock footage archive.

Date: Thursday, September 1st, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Cops (B+W, 1922)
One of Buster Keaton’s most iconic and brilliantly constructed films it tells the Kafka-esque story of a man who accidentally gets on the wrong side of the Los Angeles Police Department by accidentally throwing a bomb into a police parade and gets chased all over the city by the entire police department. Keaton's efforts to elude them are both inventive and funny. This short also contains the classic sequence with a horse and an overfull wagon load of furniture. One of Keaton's most iconic and brilliantly-constructed short films, “Cops” was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry in 1997.

The Balloonatic (B+W, 1923)
Here in “The Balloonatic”, Keaton prolific creativity tests out hot air balloons and wilderness

survival. Keaton is accidentally whisked away on a flying balloon, only to get stranded in untamed wild! Fortunately he encounters a woman (Phyllis Haver) who is a skilled outdoorsman. As they attempt to best each other, Keaton and Haver have wild jungle adventures. “The Balloonatic” was one of the last short films Keaton made before moving on to feature length films; but the charm and clever gags are on full display in this brief madcap adventure.

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!

Buster Keaton Rides Again (B+W, 1965)
This rarely screened insightful, and touching documentary takes you on location with Keaton

during the filming of “The Railrodder”. It contains the only known footage of Keaton at work behind the camera, revealing the same methods he used to create his classic films of the 1920s. Watch behind-the-scenes footage of Keaton and his wife as well as quirky clips from his earlier films. “Buster Keaton Rides Again” provides an invaluable opportunity to understand his comic genius and, ultimately, the secret of his universal charm and humor. Directed by John Spotton for the National Film Board of Canada and winner of many international awards including prizes from the Montreal International Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1966.

Railrodder (Color, 1965)
A National Film Board of Canada production co-directed by Keaton and Gerald Potterton, this

hilarious silent-style movie pulls out all the stops! Portraying an old goofball accidentally traveling by motorized rail cart, Buster Keaton shines here in what would be one of his final roles.

For the Early Birds:

Misadventures of Buster Keaton (B+W, 1950)
Keaton plays himself, and is quite the player (…it would seem). Short-lived though this TV series was, these episodes do retain the certain charm of a real sly survivor.

Plus! Vintage commercials of Buster Keaton!




About Oddball Films

Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 welcomes world renowned artist and filmmaker Paul Clipson for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. Paul Clipson's work is based on collaboration, whether with sound artists, musicians, or actors. This evening's program focuses on early sound/music film collaborations made with the band Tarentel, as well a series of short comic experiments made with Adam Heavenrich, all titled Bucky, and finally touches on influences such as Buster Keaton and Maya Deren. Included are the following films, plus a few surprises!: BUCKY (1996-1998) Episodes 1-6, a curious figure navigates the world in an attempt to understand, BIG BLACK SQUARE (2004), an expressionistic view of fear within the spinning zoetrope of an industrial labyrinth, OVER WATER (2005-2006), the light and water of winter-time, viewed at 35,000 feet, over the U.S., somewhere between the East and West coasts, SUN PLACE (2007), a study of relationships between graphic visual forms of nature and the propulsive rhythms of music-making, ECHO PARK (2007), an abstract sci-fi dream of vegetation, narratives and wordless experiences, and WATERCOLOR NIGHT MONTAGE NO.7(2007), this predominantly night-light filled study of movement and rhythm in neon, concludes at dawn entering the awakening industrial rail yards of Venice, Italy. Plus 16mm selections from the archive to round out the evening.

Date: Thursday, September 15th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

BUCKY (1996-1998) Episodes 1-6, Super 8mm w/ sound, Paul Clipson and Adam Heavenrich, 12 minutes total
A curious figure navigates the world in an attempt to understand. Based on a series of conversations between Clipson and Heavenrich on subjects such as whether it's really possible to mail a letter, board a train, or cross a street.

BIG BLACK SQUARE (2004) Super 8mm film, color, 6 minutes, music by Tarentel
An expressionistic view of fear within the spinning zoetrope of an industrial labyrinth. Filmed in the industrial landscapes of San Francisco.

OVER WATER (2005-2006) Super 8mm, color, 6 minutes, music by Tarentel
The light and water of winter-time, viewed at 35,000 feet, over the U.S., somewhere between the East and West coasts. Filmed during two separate trips from San Francisco to New York.

SUN PLACE (2007) Super 8mm, color, 7 minutes, music by Tarentel
A study of relationships between graphic visual forms of nature and the propulsive rhythms of music-making.

ECHO PARK (2007) Super 8mm, 9 minutes, music by Tarentel
An abstract sci-fi dream of vegetation, narratives and wordless experiences- sidewalks seen through puddles, cities floating above bar counters and spiders communicating with stars. Filmed in Los Angeles.

WATERCOLOR NIGHT MONTAGE NO.7 (2007) 9 minutes, color, music by Tarentel
Shot while on tour with Tarentel in Italy, this predominantly night-light filled study of movement and rhythm in neon, concludes at dawn entering the awakening industrial rail yards of Venice.

About Paul Clipson
San Francisco-based filmmaker Paul Clipson makes Super 8mm and 16mm films often in collaboration with sound artists and musicians that attempt to suggest the excitement of experience, of taking a walk, going on a trip, freaking out, getting lost or being under the influence of things natural or unnatural, like cities, streams, dreams, neon signs, puddles and spiders, a world theatricalized by our attraction and dread of all things. He wants to make films that astonish, in the Silver Age Jack Kirby sense, as well as in the Cocteau-Orpheus sense of the term. To make films of the poetics of space, the expressionism of a Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the camerawork of Orson Welles, or the dance of Maya Deren, Films that exist somewhere between a screen of layered lights, colors, shadows and the imagination. His work has screened around the world in festivals and at sound and film events such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The New York Film Festival, and the Cinémathèque Française. http://www.withinmirrors.org/



About Oddball Films

Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Retro-Tech - Vintage Computer Shorts from the Archive, a program of 16mm films from the 60s-80s about the rise of computer technology and the early predictions for an automated future. From William Shatner explaining microprocessors to killer-computers, the original computer dates, animation and more, take a look at the future of technology through the eyes of the past. Science Fiction's perennial Captain, William Shatner gets trippy with silica and microprocessors in the AT&T sponsored Microworld (1976). Presaging the current internet matchmaking trend, Comput-Her Baby is a wacky art film spoofing the notion of computer-assisted love in 1967. The Oddball favorite Signal Syntax (1980) will have you watching out for your personal computer, because it might be trying to kill you. It's not Monty Python, but John Cleese attempts to answer that burning early-80s question: What is a Word Processor? (1982). View early computer-generated animation and imagery in Bruce and Katharine Cornwell's Dragonfold and Other Ways to Fill Space (1979), John Wilson's Both Sides Now (1972) the first computer generated music short featuring the musical stylings of Joni Mitchell, the parasitological applications of computer graphics in Shapes of Nature: Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus (1981), and even more! Everything screened on 16mm film from our massive stock footage collection.

Date: Friday, September 9th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Microworld (Color, 1976)

Host William Shatner explores the oddly psychedelic world of silica and microprocessors. This AT&T-produced film is chock full of outdated notions of the future and obsolete technology.

What is a Word Processor? (Color, 1982, excerpt)
It's almost too terrible to sit through (and we won't watch it all), but this British film introduces the viewer to the must-have features of that word-crunching wonder (shown here as an early gargantuan version) that'd go on to make the typewriter redundant. This early 80's industrial film is also noteworthy for it's co-star, a sort of poor man's John Cleese. (…No wait, that actually is John Cleese!?!)

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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.”

Comput-Her Baby (Color, 1968)

A wacky short musical/art film that spoofs the prospect of love and dating in the computer age. Sweet and strangely prescient.

Signal Syntax (Color, 1980)

Ridiculous, bizarre low budget short about killer computers that violently do away with their owners.  Featuring vintage computer technology, this John Remington film poses is an omen to the grudge against humanity personal computers of the future will hold.

Both Sides Now (Color, 1972)

Pioneering computer animation from John Wilson, whose career started in the late 1940’s (winning Oscars for Gerald McBoing-Boing and Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom). This short was the first computer generated music film and was produced for and aired on the Sonny and Cher TV show. The song (unsurprisingly) is Both Sides Now by the great Canadian chanteuse Joni Mitchell.

Shapes of Nature: Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus (Color, 1981)

This computer-generated study of a common farming pest took on a bizzare, Tron-like supernatural beauty in the hands of leading scientists of the day.

Discovering Computers (Color, 1982)

File this educational film designed to teach elementary school kids about computer basics under: "unintentionally hilarious". Early computer graphics, staged scenes of kids playing grown-up, and NASA space simulations all combine for one floppy drive full of fun.



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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Trip Back: The Original San Francisco Psychedelic Freakout, an evening of 16mm short films shot in San Francisco in the late 1960s drenched in hippies and hallucinogens. This one of a kind program of rare experimental documents of the Summer of Love and beyond includes appearances by Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jefferson Airplane, Diggers, banana skin smokers and more! The homegrown hallucinations include Be-In (1967) artistically documenting the human be-in in Golden Gate Park with Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in attendance and the groovy, acid-soaked S.F. Trips Festival: An Opening (1967) featuring stroboscopic visuals and wild electric light shows. Sit in on the steps of our own city hall with the anarchistic Diggers in Nowsreal (1968), then watch them smoke up, freak out and deliver free breakfast to poverty-stricken San Franciscans. Decades before Burning Man, artist Fredric Hobbs created his grotesque sculptural art car The Trojan Horse (1967); watch as he constructs the automotive monster and drives it around the city. Plus, an experimental home movie of Jefferson Airplane in Golden Gate Park (1969) and get mellow yellow with the Banana Skin Freaks (1960s). Plus, local animator Vince Collins' mind-blowing metamorphic surrealist short Fantasy (1976). It's a night of San Francisco's most hallucinatory history - thousands of tabs of acid in the making! Everything screened on 16mm film from our stock footage archive.

Date: Thursday, September 8th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Be-In (Dir. Jerry Abrams, Color, 1967)
An impressionistic document of the January 14, 1967 San Francisco Human Be-In, held in Golden Gate Park, that solidified the psychedelic movement. Captured in the moment are Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure Lenore Kandel and Timothy Leary, with glimpses of the Grateful Dead and 10,000 peace and lovemaking freaks. Music by psych-blues heavies Blue Cheer (named after a particularly heavy batch of LSD).

S.F. Trips Festival: An Opening (Ben Van Meter, Color 1967)

Experimental multi-exposure freak out documents the 1966 Trips Festival, an acid-drenched “Happening” staged in San Francisco at the Longshoremen’s Hall (400 North Point) in January of 1966.

Banana Skin Freaks (B+W, 1960s)
Hippies in Golden Gate Park freak-out with banana skins (Remember the Donovan song “Mellow Yellow”?) you know the fruit skins that supposedly made you high...what else?

Trojan Horse (Prod. Ronald Bostwick/Robert Blasdell, Color, 1967)

Documents the creation of the amazing rolling sculpture designed by outsider artist Fredric Hobbs, unleashed on San Francisco during the Summer of Love. Clad in an orange jump suit, Hobbs drives his creation all over our beautiful city from Haight Ashbury to North Beach, Lincoln Park to downtown, culminating in a final, ignominious act: the issuance of a parking ticket by one of San Francisco’s finest.

Arriving in San Francisco in the late 1950’s after studying in Madrid, artist Fredric Hobbs Goya-inspired paintings “were populated with demons performing sacrifices and contemporary witches’ Sabbaths… his grotesque figures gradually became translated into sculpture. In the early 1960’s- inspired by the folk idols used in pagan rituals and primitive religious processions- Hobbs began adding wheels to his mutilated Everyman and deformed Earth Mothers and rolling them about the streets. His most ambitious “parade sculpture” was The Trojan Horse, a horrendous tableau of mythological monsters that rose from Procrustean slags of plexiglass attached to a stripped-down auto chassis. Wearing an orange jump suit, Hobbs drove the creation to Los Angeles, where it exhibited at several locations”. (Thomas Albright- Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980).

Hobbs went on to make several insanely bizarre, Bay Area-based cult films in the early 1970’s, including Roseland, Alabama’s Ghost, and Godmonster of Indian Flats.

Nowsreal (Color, 1968)

A beautiful print of this super rarity filmed in and around San Francisco in the Spring of 1968, documenting in abstract fashion the “end” of the Digger movement- the loose collective of artists, radicals and free thinkers who were closely associated with and shared a number of members with a guerilla theater group the San Francisco Mime Troupe. They envisioned a society free from private property, and all forms of buying and selling (actor Peter Coyote was a founding member of the Diggers).

We moved the Diggers onto the City Hall steps and occupied them for three months, giving out food to city employees, washing our hair in the fountain, reading poetry on the steps. We made a film about that titled Nowsreal. We made a decision that the Diggers would end when the event ended on the summer solstice. On the last day, we put “San Francisco is Entering Into Eternity” on a theatre marquee. We held events in five different parts of the city, watched the sun go down, and asked each other: “What are we going to do now? - co-producer Peter Berg in conversation with Ron Chepesiuk from the book “Sixties Radicals, Then and Now”

Jefferson Airplane/Golden Gate Park (B+W, 1969)
Unique, unknown silent amateur footage of the Jefferson Airplane performing and some appropriately trippy Golden Gate Park experimentation!

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:

A Boy Creates (Dir. Bert Van Bork, Color, 1971)
Sweet kids film made by the masterful, prolific educational filmmaker Bert Van Bork of a boy who admires the clowns and other figures (including Laughing Sal) at SF’s Playland at the Beach (closed and leveled in 1972), then collects junk and builds figures along the Emeryville mudflats (where the famous scene takes place in Harold and Maude and still visible today as you drive along Highway 80).


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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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 Menstrual Show: A Puberty Pajama Party. It's a night of 16mm menstrucational shorts from the buttoned-up 1940s through the frank and awkward 1980s -handpicked from our massive stock footage archive. Linda's Film on Menstruation (1974) features two clueless teens trying to figure out about the monthly cycle through cartoons, sports announcers, and game shows. Stay out of the water, choose your packet of sanitary napkins, and rub yourself with cold cream in the very British puberty primer Growing Girls (1951). Dance along with a large-headed and footless cartoon girl as she learns about the physical and mental aspects of her monthly visitor in Di$ney's notorious Story of Menstruation (1945). Learn all about your first period and making out with smiley-faced pillows with the most awkward pubescent heroine of the 80s in Dear Diary: A Film about Female Puberty (1981). Join Marlo Thomas and a slumber party of young girls gabbing about their changing bodies, lip-syncing terribly and other girlie stuff in The Body Human: The Facts for Girls (1980). Canadian women talk openly aboot the taboo subject of menstrual pain in the laughably menstrutaining film Cramps! (1982). Plus, a couple of secret surprises and more menstrutainment for the early birds. Come in full pajamas for $2.00 off admission!

Date: Friday, September 23rd, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 ($8.00 for those in pajamas), Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Linda's Film on Menstruation (Color, 1974)
"It means that blood is falling out of my uterus!"

Half-assed sex education with two groovy teens from the mid-seventies. Judy is a regular 15 year old girl going through what every woman goes through at some point, her first monthly visitor. Her 16 year old boyfriend hasn't got a clue, and quite frankly she doesn't really either. Thankfully there's an obnoxious cartoon to explain it all to them! If that doesn't work, maybe the menstruation game show will hammer home the facts. Also featuring actor Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad.

Dear Diary, a film about female puberty (Color, 1981)
The Welcome to the Dollhouse of puberty primers! The exaggerated characterizations and embarrassing situations experienced by the film's incredibly awkward thirteen-year-old protagonist are humorously combined to provide answers to female adolescents' questions about their changing bodies. The young girl encounters peer pressure from her boy-crazy friends, changing sex roles, and a pillow with smiley face. Keep your eyes peeled for the animated menstruation cycle.

The Body Human - The Facts for Girls (Color, 1980)
"Being a girl is very special. I know... I remember"
TV's That Girl Marlo Thomas, the mastermind behind Free to be...You and Me, gabs with three young girls about the facts of life, their changing bodies and more awkward topics. With a jammin' slumber party, crowd surfing, chats about Billy Jean King's period, some terrible karaoke, and a soundtrack that includes The Bee-Gees, Donna Summer and the Righteous Brothers, The Facts for Girls really delivers!

The Story of Menstruation (Color, 1945)

A Walt D*sney Production, The Story of Menstruation is an animated short film produced for American schools detailing the menstrual cycle. Rumored to be the first film with the word “vagina” in it’s screenplay, this vintage gem is both matter of fact and dreamily flowery. A large-headed girl takes you through the dos and don’ts of menses while helpful diagrams guide us all to better understanding.

Growing Girls (B+W, 1951)
Mary is 13 and going through a lot of changes in this very prim and proper British puberty short. Drawing on various farm animal analogies (so as not to step into any taboo subjects) we learn all about getting ready to have babies! Watch as Mary schedules her period, unwraps a delightful present of sanitary pads, and as she burns her soiled pads in the fireplace! The narrator has lots of great tips including not swimming, an obsession against "a chill" and even recommends spreading cold cream on her privates!

Cramps! (Color, 1982)
Oh those Canadians with their open discussions of taboo topics! This ode to period pain begins with a parade of women throughout history (including Rosie the Riveter) discussing how they must never speak of their menstrual pain. Then, we visit a round-table of early-80s Canadian women talking aboot their experiences with cramps intercut with a delightful dramatization of one young woman's struggle with her uterus that gets in the way of her work life and her love life. When her beau thinks she's growing distant and is ready to call it quits, will she be able to admit to her personal problem, even if it is embarrassing?


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 250 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 The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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.

Revolutionary Black Voices - Thur. July 14th - 8PM

Cinema Soiree: Jim Morton on East German Genre Films - Thur. July 28th - 8PM

Vintage Burlesque Bonanza! - Fri. July 22nd - 8PM

Humanimation - Stop-Motion Pixilation - Thur. July 21st - 8PM

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The Oddball OlympiXXX - 16mm Sports and Smut - Fri. Aug. 5th - 8PM

Cinematic Synesthesia: A Sensory Overload - Thur. Aug. 4th - 8PM

Youth Gone Wild: Vintage Juvenile Delinquency Shorts - Fri. Aug. 12th - 8PM

Scientific Psychedelia - Thurs. Aug. 11th - 8PM

Learn your Lesson's Final Exam - Shockucation's Last Hurrah - Fri. Aug. 19th - 8PM

Cinema Soiree - Form and Frenzy with Zach Von Joo - Thurs. Aug 18th - 8 PM

A Century of Drag Cinema - Fri. Aug. 26th - 8PM

Strange Sinema 103: Cinemania - Thur. Aug. 25th - 8PM

Better Living Through Di$ney - Educational Shorts from the Magic Kingdom - Fri. Sep. 2nd - 8PM

Buster Keaton Rides Again - Thurs. Sep. 1st - 8PM

Cinema Soiree: Ends And Odds: Early and Rare Films by Paul Clipson - Thur. Sep 15th - 8PM

Retro-Tech - Vintage Computer Shorts from the Archive - Fri. Sep. 9th - 8PM

The Trip Back: The Original San Francisco Psychedelic Freakout - Thurs. Sep. 8th - 8PM

The Menstrual Show: A Puberty Pajama Party - Fri. Sep. 23rd - 8PM