Polanski and the Polish Avant-Garde - Thur. Aug. 1st - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Polanski and the Polish Avant-Garde, a program of brilliant short films and animation from Cold-War era Poland. Dark, clever and with an ever-present undertone of veiled oppression, this program will open your eyes to the beauty and wit of this handpicked handful of Polish innovators. A young Roman Polanski (arguably the most famous filmmaker to come out of Poland) brings us Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), his darkly comic student film rife with absurdities and angst.  The visionary artist Jan Lenica, (among Polanski's biggest influences) gives us a hip animated version of Ionesco's Rhinoceros (1965) utilizing collage and cut-outs.  With strict censorship from the state, many Polish filmmakers were forced to use allegory to relay their anti-war messages in a veiled manner.  Tad Makarczynski's The Magician (1962) tells the story of young boys recruited to be soldiers by a nefarious magician.   The incredibly brilliant (and Oddball favorite) dystopian masterpiece No. 00173 (1967) will blow your mind with it's eery depiction of a grim factory, momentarily brightened by a colorful butterfly. Working with oil-based paints on glass, master Polish animator Witold Giersz's Red and Black (1963) influenced animators the world over.  Plus, two stop-motion pieces; Worek (AKA The Sack) about a burlap sack that dictatorially terrorizes a room of inanimate objects and the darling The Day the Colors Went Away with a little girl who must hunt down her runaway watercolors to recolor the world. With more surprises for the early birds! 

Date: Thursday August 1st, 2013 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Stand Your Ground - Fri. Aug. 2 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator/Oddball archivist Scotty Slade present: Stand Your Ground, films that explore youthful identity in opposition to the old guard's rancorous ways in three steps. In Thank You Mask Man (1971) with Lenny Bruce, downright public contempt comes gushing out of the guts of those who are disgusted by what they cannot understand in this animated anti-homophobic film about a sexy affair between the Lone Ranger and Tonto. In a laughable attempt at trying to understand "the youth" of 1958, the National Association of Churches for Christ along with CBS paired up to make The Deliquent, The Hipster and the Square, an utterly ethnographic study on this ever puzzling trifecta of puzzling identities. Finally, to bring it all home right here to the history of vibrant bay area youth, is Last Free Ride (1974), "a hip pirate movie", about a bohemian community of houseboat dwellers and the rock band The Red Legs, who come face-to-face with the squarest of square bay area anti-youthers, desperately attempting to end the floating utopian lifestyle and sell sell sell. Best of all, filmmaker Saul Rouda will be here in person to talk about the film, the community, and some bay area history. If you love youth, inspiration, seeing cops falling off boats and bad people stuck in the mud - not to mention incredible house-boat architecture, rarely-seen unconventional forms of living, and bay area history - this film will rock your red legs! Check out the trailer and some other info here: http://www.lastfreeride.com/.  So come on down, bring your friends, and get ready to storm the streets of life on your way out!

Date: Friday, August 2nd, 2013 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Strange Sinema 66: Strange Synthesis/Media Manipulators - Thur. July 25 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 66 Oddities From the Archives, an evening of offbeat discoveries and choice rarities from the stacks of Oddball Films’ 50,000 reel film archive. This month's installment, Strange Sinema 66: Strange Synthesis/Media Manipulators is an examination of forward thinking artists and cultural theorists. The program features films by surrealists, avant-garde geniuses and media misfits from the 1920s through the 1960s. Films include the plotless, dadaist Anemic Cinema (1926) by the 1920s avant-garde icon Marcel Duchamp; excerpts from Andy Warhol (1967) with highlights from his early films; media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s Picnic in Space (1967), sublime ruminations with a background pop cultural pastiche and an electronic music score by Morton Subotnick, a groundbreaking examination of the Dadaist movement, Dada (1967) featuring Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Hans Richter reenactment of a Cabaret Voltaire performance with Dadist Jean Arp playing piano. We finish with Art of the Sixties (1967), featuring the monumental soft sculptures of pop icon Claes Oldenberg, kinetic artist Len Lye, Les Levine’s interactive environments, action painter provocateur Jackson Pollock and more. Also! Twenty Four Dollar Island (1927), Robert Flaherty’s portrait of New York City as a living breathing mechanical and industrial overlord.

Date: Thursday, July 25, 2013 at 8:00PM

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

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

Inside the Cosmic Mind - Sci-Fi in July - Fri. July 26 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Inside the Cosmic Mind - Sci-Fi in July, seven 16mm films that squint past our planet and consider the cosmos.  But peering so deeply into the celestial ether will inevitably make us turn the telescope on ourselves--a theme inspired and illustrated by our first film, Cosmic Zoom (1968), the classic NFB short in which the camera zooms ever outward, pausing on the edge of the universe--where our vast galaxy is but a speck among others—before diving back to Earth and into the “inner space” of a boy paddling a boat on a river, ending up inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule.  And so our screening proceeds from here in two parts: outer space films, with astronauts and aliens; and inner space ones, cerebral journeys through space and the mind.  We blast off with that honorary astronaut Orson Welles as our galactic guide, in Who’s Out There (1975), a documentary that ponders the greater population of the universe and the likelihood (or mathematical probability) of extraterrestrial company.  The question of that film’s title is then answered by the visitors of It Came from Outer Space (1953), a staple of the sci-fi thriller genre, directed by Jack Arnold (we’ll see an excerpt).  Then, in Spaceborne (1977), a film consisting of footage shot during actual NASA missions, we’ll luxuriate in the elegant, near-balletic images of astronauts floating in zero gravity and our Earth receding in the black distance—sights made all the more moving by the soundtrack’s ethereal synth music.  The quality and grandeur of this film’s images justifiably bring to mind 2001.  We move forward and inward, into the dystopic future of Chris Marker’s landmark La Jetee (1963), a film made up of pristine still photographs, and set largely in the mind of its central character, who traverses time and memory.  This is one of the great philosophical sci-fi films, and its tragic lyricism gives way to the optical apocalypse of our next film, Omega (1970), a shattering and transcendent vision of The End, in which three silhouetted figures sit serenely on a hill and accept their cosmic destiny.     
  

Date: Friday, July 26th, 2013 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Retro Robot Films at the Robot Film Festival @ Bot & Olly Studios - Sat. July 20 - 3:30 PM

Oddball Films' Director Stephen Parr will be presenting a program on Retro Robot Films during the 3rd Annual Robot Film Festival. After two evocative summers in NYC, the Robot Film Festival (RFF) is entering its third year of bringing artful, witty, and cutting-edge films to film and tech lovers like you! RFF is a pioneer in investigating the human-machine relationship in front of the lens, particularly aiming to promote positive storytelling about robotics. Parr's program of Retro Robot Films, a tribute to robots, robotics and mechanized machines features films such as Elektro The Smoking Robot from the New York World's Fair, No. 00137, The Weird World of Robots with Isaac Asimov, an excerpt of Ray Bradbury's Electric Grandmother, a Westworld Production Short for Michael Crichton's sci-fi Western,  Daffy Duck in Design For Leaving, The Robotic Revolution, Mr. Koumal Invents a Robot, Ballet Robotique, robotic commercials and much, much more.  

Date: Saturday, July 20th, Festival begins at 11:30, Retro Robots at 3:30

Venue: Bot & Dolly studios at 150 Mississippi St, San Francisco, CA 94107

For more information, click here and for tickets, click here.

The Speed of Dark: Nightlife and Nightmares - Fri. July 19 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents The Speed of Dark: Nightlife and Nightmares, a program of films that highlight the dark seduction of the nighttime. Whether awake or asleep, when the sun sets, the world becomes more exciting and menacing.   Allegro Ma Troppo (1963) captures the life of Paris between 6PM and 6AM shot at two frames per second utilizing automatic cameras.  Laurel and Hardy team up to burgle for the police in the Hal Roach comedy The Night Owls (1930).  Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto's brilliant and mind-bending cartoon Ego (1970) unleashes one man's dark, psychedelic and erotic dreams from Hitler to a naked Mona Lisa. Discover the world of the graveyard shift in the mini-doc Night People’s Day (1971).  One naked little boy floats away from his bed and ends up baked in a pie in an adaptation of Maurice Sendak's censored, but much-loved In the Night Kitchen (1975).  George Melies offers his unique whimsy and magic to Baron Munchausen’s Dream (1911).  Eliot Noyes Jr. creates dreamy animation out of sand in Sandman (1970). Witness the unique nighttime flagellation ceremony of Australia's aboriginal Walbiri Fire Ceremony (1977).  One little girl has trouble sleeping with all the Noises In The Night (1969) in a sweet cartoon from UPA founder's Stephen Bosustow Productions.  Plus! Leggy showgirls bust out the moves at the Classic Hollywood hotspot, The Trocadero Cafe in A Night at the Troc (1943) and even more surprises!

Date: Friday, July 19th, 2013 at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00, RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com

More Amazing Animal Antics! - Thur. July 18 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents More Amazing Animal Antics!, a second helping of vintage films full of adorable, hilarious and anthropomorphic cats, dogs, chimps, horses and more!  Decades before youtube, CGI, and the Buddies franchise, these furry film stars were doing tricks, having affairs, talking, singing and going wild in a sorority house! The evening's beastly brigade includes the heartwarming and hair-raising Hungarian film The Incredible Cat Tale (1960), featuring one incredible cat that will stop at nothing to be reunited with her kittens. In the hilarious "Speaking of Animals" short, In A Harem (1941), one dirty dog falls asleep and dreams of his own personal poochie harem. Have breakfast with big-screen primate sensation The Talking Tiffany Chimps, in the rare short Skimpy (1931).  Over 100 years old and still as charming as ever, Wladyslaw Starewicz's The Cameraman's Revenge (1912) features Mr. and Mrs. Beetle and their marital unrest.  And (a horse) of course, that chatty equine Mr. Ed will be here and trapped in the basement of a sorority house in a bizarre and racy episode of the original series.  The range ain't no place for monkeying around, but one cow-chimp will have to make do in Chimp the Cowboy (1937). One brave kitty must make her way through the big city in The Perils of Priscilla (1969). Plus, Wonder Dogs in Action! and the kodachrome treasure Training You to Your Dog (1952) includes a doggy tea-party and useful hints to have a wonder-mutt of your own.  With even more bizarre beasts for the early birds!

Date: Thursday, July 18th, 2013 at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com

Learn Your Lesson...On Wheels - Shockucational Traffic School - Fri. July 12 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Learn Your Lesson...On Wheels - Shockucational Traffic School, the fifth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection. This time we're strapping on our skates, hopping on our bikes and riding the bus to safetyville with a few dozen crashes along the way!  Monkeying around on your bicycle has never been more deadly than for the 10 chimp-masked children heading to a picnic but not following the rules of the road in the legendary One Got Fat (1963).  In the charmingly bizarre Bus Nut (1980), little pre-teen Bobbie's got one thing on her mind - bus safety - and she's got the T-shirt to prove it!  Fast girls and fast cars add up to a speedy death in the melodramatic Last Prom (1973).  Pre-teens (in an overload of neon) rap about safe cycling in the Triaminic sponsored musicalamity Bicycle Safety Camp (1991, Video).  It's about time your learned to Rollerskate Safely (1981); a jammin' early-80's time capsule made in the heyday of the rollerskating craze.  In Safety Belt for Susie (1962), a doll without a seat belt doesn't fare so well after an accident, and doll parts get flung to the four-winds!  Plus, with so much to choose from, we'll be multi-projecting antique crash footage with clips from Afterschool Specials and safety films.  Clips include: Scott Baio in All the Kids Do It (1984), Alco Beat (1965), Gambling with Death (1925), Not So Easy (1973) starring Evel Knievel and Peter Fonda, Highway Mania (1942) and more!  With vintage trailers and the supernatural romance Ghost Rider (1982) for the early birds, learning about safety was never this much fun! 

Date: Friday, July 12th, 2013 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Movies Making Movies: The Secrets of Cinema - Thu. July 11 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present: Movies Making Movies: The Secrets of Cinema. Using cartoons, experimental film, trailers, making-of featurettes and more we’ll go behind the scenes to probe the life of movies and how movies have become a ubiquitous part of our lives. The history and tradespeople of tinseltown get their due in Let's Go to the Movies (1948). Film gets direct manipulation in meta-movie gem Kick Me (1975); just imagine the horror of being stuck in those teeny, tiny frames. The Looney Tunes Gang bites the hand that feeds it in when they spoof Hollywood in the glamorous Bacall to Arms (1946) and the manic Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938).  Spend a day with teen-star Hayley Mills behind the scenes for 1966’s The Trouble with Angels in a breezy fluff piece for her tween fans. Housemaid Mabel Normand gets booted from the washboard and into film stardom in Mabel’s Dramatic Career (1913). Plus! A generous sprinkling of vintage Trailers and other cinematic curiosities from the Oddball treasure trove will be featured throughout the program!

Date: Thursday, July 11th, 2013 at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00, RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com