Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates
bring you Pure Cool, a screening swinging
with a heady and hip sound called Jazz. This program highlights jazz
music from the '50's and '60's, roughly ranging from the lush minimalism of Cool
Jazz to the feverish dissonance of the Post-Bob era. Two of the films are
slight but sweet digressions, included for their notable jazz scores, but the majority
touch upon the cultural image of jazz--the "cool" aesthetic with its hipster
lingo, the underground jam sessions held in after hours exclusivity. We kick
off our set with a classic of jazz cinema, Jammin' the Blues (1944), which
features the coolest of cats, Lester Young, sitting in a relaxed slouch
with his sax slung to his side as he wails a languorous line; a cigarette
smolders, pinched between two fingers as he plays, but against the black
background it looks as though his horn is smoking and you can see the tones floating up from it. Music is
made manifest for real in USA Dance: Echoes of Jazz (1965), a
film showcasing modern dance interpretations of music from the 3rd
Stream movement, which fused orchestral and avant garde styles. Some of the dramatically choreographed steps we’ll
see include ‘snake hips’, ‘shooting the angus’, and ‘the mooch’. We’ll then slide into Glass (1958), an award
winning short that sets the mellow music of the Pim Jacobs’ Quartet to the
elegant movements of a team of expert glass blowers, whose puffed-out cheeks
resemble those of jazzmen. Lenny Bruce
then riffs on hipster speak in Ernest Pintoff’s animation, The
Interview (1960). Bebop or beatnik culture gets ribbed again in
Help,
My Snowman is Burning (1964), a sort of absurdist short by Carson
Davidson, which stars Bob Larkin and features music by the Gerry Mulligan
Quartet. We then move from parody to the
real thing with our final two films. We’ll
glimpse rare footage of Art Blakey playing with his Jazz Messengers at a San
Francisco night club, sweating torrentially as he reigns down thunderously upon
his drum kit. And, finally, we’ll close
with Mingus
(1968), Tom Reichman’s intimate cinema verite film that sheds light on
the bitter-sweet reality of Charles Mingus’s life in New York City in the late
‘60’s.
Date: Friday, October 4th,
2013 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275
Capp St. San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited
Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Featuring:
Jammin’
the Blues (B&W, 1944)
Probably
the most famous jazz film ever made- produced by jazz impresario Norman Granz,
directed by Gjon Mili and featuring incredible performances by Lester “Prez”
Young, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Illinois Jacquet, Barney Kessel, Marlowe Morris,
John Simmons, George “Red” Callender, “Big” Sid Catlett and “Papa” Jo
Jones. Nominated for an Oscar in 1945
and entered into the National Film registry in 1955, this film simply must be
seen by any serious jazz fan. Cinematography was by the later Hitchcock
stalwart Robert Burks on his very first DP assignment. There is a noir ambience to the film and each
scene has a formal elegance that is enthralling. Mili has total command of his
form (his only film as director!), and the mise-en-scene and continuity are
impeccable.
USA Dance: Echoes of Jazz (1965)
Kinescope of an episode from the TV series USA
Dance, this clip features interpretive dance (choreographed by John Butler)
set to a Gunther Schuller piece (based on a theme by John Lewis of the Modern
Jazz Quartet). Schuller was the
major exponent of Third Stream Music, a synthesis of classical music and
jazz improvisation.
Glass (Color, 1958)
Brilliant Academy Award winning short
juxtaposes traditional glass blowing with “modern” glass manufacturing. Made by
Bert Haanstra (Netherlands), the wordless Glass is a near perfect film,
perfectly balancing images and rhythm with the wonderful cool jazz soundtrack
by the Pim Jacobs Quintet.
Help, My Snowman’s Burning Down (Color, 1964)
Academy award-nominated (and Oddball Films
favorite) short by Carson Davidson starring Bob Larkin (later in the cult film
Putney Swope). Beatnik lives outdoors on
a boat dock off Manhattan with only bathroom furnishings and a typewriter. Utilizes great stop motion and surreal
effects, and the original coolly swinging music of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.
The
Interview (Color, 1960)
Animated short by the brilliant Ernie Pintoff
has square interviewer befuddled by fictional hipster jazz musician Shorty
Petterstein (voiced by Lenny Bruce) as the Stan Getz combo blows and riffs “off
camera”. “Like, don’t hang me- I
didn’t wanna fall up here in the first place!”
Mingus (B&W, 1968)
Tom Reichman's penetrating cinema verite look
at the struggle of jazz icon Charles Mingus as he and his daughter face hard
times. Rare and riveting footage of Mingus performing on stage in a nightclub
near Boston, conducting a big band and composing and singing is inter cut with
scenes of the proud musician in his cluttered New York loft, where-- while
awaiting eviction-- from his failed dream of a jazz school-he speaks candidly
on topics ranging from music to sex to racism.
Mingus, originally from the Watts ghetto in Los
Angeles worked his way up the musical ladder to become one of the greatest
musicians in the history of jazz working with virtually everyone in the
business. Throughout his career most of his music retained the hot and soulful
feel of hard bop, and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes
drawing on elements of Third Stream Jazz and free jazz. Yet Mingus avoided
categorization, forging his own unique brand of music that fused tradition with
unique and unexplored realms of jazz. He's influenced countless musicians and
artists as diverse as the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and Joni Mitchell (whom he
collaborated with).
In this film he is joined in performances by
Dannie Richmond, Walter Bishop, John Gilmore (Sun Ra) and Charles McPherson
playing such tunes as "All the Things You Are", "Secret
Love", and "Take the ‘A’ Train". The film is also punctuated
with some inspiring poetry. Charles
Mingus is often considered the heir apparent to the great Duke Ellington both
for his transcendent musicianship and his visionary compositions.
Curator’s Biography:
Landon Bates is a UC Berkeley graduate of English literature and is the drummer for the two-piece band Disappearing People.
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.