Eastern European Animation - Thur. Apr. 2nd - 8PM


Oddball Films presents Eastern European Animation, an evening of rare and masterful works of animation from Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia, USSR and Yugoslavia, all on 16mm from the archive.  The films range in form and subject matter, from the melancholic to the celebratory but all possess an intricate artistry and many, a dark undercurrent of oppression. Films include Little Gray Neck (1948), the Soviet answer to a Disney film with a small duck who sticks up for his bunny comrade against a mean hungry fox. From Sofia Films in Bulgaria comes Caw! (1982), a quirky tale of birds, music and (dis)harmony, and De Fakto (1973), a cartoon blame game. From Poland's Miniature Film Studio, there is The Divided Man (1971), a short meditation on the choices that shape our lives; Colorful Ray (1974) from the serial Pomysłowy Dobromir featuring a mini-MacGuyver; and 6,5,4,3,2,1 (1967) that combines cell-animation and collage to create a vision on human progress from the dawn of man to the future of rocketeering. From Kratky Film Praha in the former Czechoslovakia, we bring you two clever puppet films from its founder, Jiri Trnka: Passion (1961) about a boy's need for speed and Song of the Prairie (1949), a hilarious western-opera; as well as the Little Mole creator Zdenek Miler's darker tale of rebellion: Red Stain (1969).  From Zagreb Film in Croatia, it's the absurd take on a Hollywood chase scene in Zlatko Grgic's Little and Big (1966).  Plus! two new hilarious Lego Sports Shorts from Hungary: Downhill Skiing and Soccer (1986) and more surprises. Creative, compelling and conscientious, this is more than just any night of cartoons.



Date: Thursday, April 2nd, 2015 at 8:00PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00, limited seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP
@oddballfilm.com
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com


How to do Everything: Absurd Instructional Films - Fri. Mar. 27 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Christina Yglesias bring you How to do Everything: Absurd Instructional Films. If you've always wanted to know how to impress your friends with some advanced trampolining, you still struggle with how to use a calendar, you want to be pretty, or you just can't get your dog to do a back flip, this show is for you. Hailing from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's these wacky, funny, and absurd instructional short films will be sure to entertain and educate. Let the spandex-clad singers of the Calendar Control Center in Calendar: How to Use It (1982) help you make sure you'll never show up a day late for a birthday party ever again. If you were too embarrassed to ask, a slightly creepy doctor and his pretty patients will give you probably outdated health information in How to Examine your Breasts (1975). Get avant-garde with How to Make a Movie Without a Camera (1972). Protect yourself from germs with a lost educational animation How To Catch A Cold (1951) from Disn*y. In How To Protect Your Bike (1973), the bell bottom-wearing youth of Santa Monica show the wrongs and rights in keeping your bike safe from lowlifes like Creepo, the most successful bike thief of them all. Things will get a little surreal in Trampoline Fundamentals (1961) with slo-mo backflips and babes in all white. Learn how to set boundaries with more kids in bellbottoms in How to Say No (1976). Learn how to force your dog to do cute stuff with the old-fashioned methods in Teach your Dog Tricks (1951). So You Want to be Pretty? (1956) is a true Oddball gem about plastic surgery gone so right that it turns things wrong between a husband and wife. This hilarious short is a comical and insane take on beauty, (in)fidelity, and marriage. Early comers will get to see How to Crack the Establishment Without Losing Your Identity (1960's). Come and learn a few things you never thought you needed to know.


Date: Friday, March 27th, 2015 at 8:00pm 
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com


Monumental Artscapes - Christo, Smithson, Siqueiros, Oldenburg - Thur. Mar. 26 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Monumental Artscapes, a program of 16mm short documentaries celebrating those artists that dared to redefine artwork in the modern world by thinking and working on a grander scale.  This imaginative evening includes the planning, construction and philosophy behind iconic earthworks, monumental sculpture and murals by Christo, Robert Smithson, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Claes Oldenburg and G. Augustine Lynas.  In a mini-tribute to the recently departed Albert Maysles, we will be screening the Maysles brothers first collaboration with Hungarian-born pop-artist Christo as he constructs his first large-scale public work in Colorado in the compelling (and Oscar-nominated) Christo's Valley Curtain (1974).  Robert Smithson documents his own massive construction of a 1,500 foot coil in the Great Salt Lake in Spiral Jetty (1970). Watch as one of Mexico's most legendary muralists plans and paints the largest mural in the world (in stunning color) in the kaleidoscopic Siqueiros, El Maestro: The March of Humanity in North America (1969).  Claes Oldenburg speaks on the importance of his outrageous soft sculptures in an excerpt from Art of the Sixties (1967). And behold as ephemeral sculptor G. Augustine Lynas turns a frisbee, shells and sand into a Mayan temple on a Fire Island beach in Sandsong (1987). It's a one of a kind look behind the creativity and construction of some of the most impressively huge artwork ever to grace the valleys, lakes and beaches of the earth. 


Date: Thursday, March 26th, 2015 at 8:00pm 
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Strange Sinema 86: Experiments in Sex - Fri. Mar. 20 - 8PM


Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 86: Experiments in Sex, a once monthly evening of newly discovered and avant-garde 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 86th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This program features a wide array of experimental and avant-garde films juxtaposed with comedic animation, pop-trash commercials, and a taste of surreal Triple XXX smut. The program explores, spoofs, and explodes concepts of eroticism from the 1930s through the 1970s.  Films include the legendary Lot in Sodom, (1933), Watson and Webber’s landmark Pre-Code Sodom and Gomorrah story filled with sinewy and semi-clad bodies and delirious bacchanales devoted to physical pleasure (print provided by the Jenni Olson Queer Archive); A Dream of Wild Horses aka Le Songe des Chevaux Sauvages (1962), the raw, yet elegant physicality of wild horses in a breathtaking, erotic and euphoric film-poem; experimental filmmaker Scott Bartlett’s lyrical and tactile flesh and fantasy film Lovemaking (1970); how to sell the sexy fashions in a unabashedly sexist Fredericks of Hollywood (1970s) excerpt; the screwball sexual psychedelia of Ego (1970) by famed Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto; the glamorous and over-the–top commercials for Bigelow Carpets (shades of the Zodiac!), Chemical Bank New York (“When her needs are financial her reaction is chemical”), and the slapstick fetishistic Safety Shoes (1970s); the amateur homoerotic North Beach “nature boy” in The Groping Hand (1968); the rare Swedish erotic exercise short Sofia Girls (1950s), an excerpt from the groundbreaking Mondo Cane (1962) featuring famed artist Yves Klein utilizing naked Human Paintbrushes on a giant canvas, the granddaddy or erotic cartoons Buried Treasure (1928) starring Eveready Harton; Tex Avery’s sexy adaptation of an age-old fairy tale Red Hot Riding Hood (1943); female soldiers demonstrate a top secret weapon developed by the military in Laser Bra 2000 (1979); porn legend Gerard Damiano’s psychobilly smut trailer Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974) featuring a combination of horror and low life white trash, a couple having sex is interposed with an old house that succumbs to a violent death in L.A. Too Much (1968) and finally we see burlesque queen Betty Dolan bring new meaning to the phrase dancing with the devil in Satan Tease (1955). Whew!

Date: Friday, March 20th at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Cinema Soiree - Live Cinematics with Intermedia Artist Elise Baldwin - Thur. Mar. 19 - 8PM

Oddball Films welcomes intermedia artist Elise Baldwin to our Cinema Soiree, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Elise Baldwin is an intermedia performer and sound artist whose live cinematic works center around themes of natural history, collective memory and relationships between technology and the natural world. Using custom software instruments, physical props and circuitry, she often combines and manipulates original and archival recordings. She will be presenting two recent audio-visual works: she will be performing her newest work The Philosophy of Storms (2014) live as well as presenting her multi-sensory circus experiment Hippodrome (2007).  Additionally, to foreground Elise's presentation and talk we will be screening several 16mm films from the archive including Origins of the Motion Picture  (1955), a fascinating documentary describing the events leading to the perfection of motion pictures, and examining the technological development, from the theories of Leonardo Da Vinci to the inventions of Thomas Edison; excerpts from Georges Melies's fantastical Baron Munchausen’s Hallucinations (1911), using new camera tricks and exquisite sets to bring the stories of the legendary Baron to life; and Lapis (1965), a mesmerizing early computer-generated animation from the great James Whitney.


Date: Thursday, March 19th, 2015 at 8:00pm 
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

The Kiss of Death - A Menage a Murder - Fri. Mar. 13 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present The Kiss of Death - A Menage a Murder, a program of 16mm films about the dark side of love and the romantic side of death in honor of Friday the 13th. It's a chilling and thrilling night of obsession, infidelity, and homicide all lovingly culled from the archive and starring Alfred Hitchcock, Dean Stockwell, Orson Welles, Peter Cushing and Susannah York with adaptations of works by Patricia Highsmith, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe and Honore de Balzac. Dean Stockwell stars in an epically creepy episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour - Annabel (1962), based on a Patricia Highsmith story and adapted by Psycho screenwriter Robert Bloch.  Stockwell's obsession for his ex-girlfriend leads to lies, double lives, stalking, murder, and an unbelievable ending.  And from one Annabel obsession to another; Edgar Allan Poe's melancholic love poem Annabel Lee (1971) evokes the ghosts of lost love. Peter Cushing and Susannah York star in a disturbing (and super rare) Balzac adaptation La Grande Bretèche (1973) from Orson Welles' Great Mysteries. From Robert Enrico comes the brilliant (and Oscar-winning) adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's haunting tale about the final romantic thoughts of a condemned man, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962).  Plus, Grant Munro's blood-sucking anti-smoking short Ashes of Doom (1970), excerpts of The Devil (1920s) French silent smut starring Satan himself, the outrageous James Thurber adaptation Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife (1981) for the early birds, and more surprises. Bring someone you love, or someone you'd like to murder.

Date: Friday, March 13th, 2015 at 8:00pm 
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Stop-Motion Explosion! - Thur. Mar. 12th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Stop-Motion Explosion!, a program of mind-blowing stop-motion animation from the 1930s to the 1980’s. In a world saturated with CGI, Oddball Films opens the vaults to celebrate when historical, fantastical and anthropomorphic creatures were hand-sculpted and manipulated into “life.”  This program features stop-motion heavy-hitters Ray Harryhausen, George Pal, Art Clokey, Norman McLaren, Ivo Caprino and Will Vinton with new finds and a few all-time favorites. Everybody's favorite green clay-boy gets into trouble while baking in In the Dough (1957) and into a musical frenzy in Gumby's Concerto (1957).  Go for the gold with two Lego sports shorts from Hungary, Gymnastics (1986) and Figure Skating (1986) both quirky and hilarious re-imaginings of Olympic sports that include robot and penguin intrusion. Brilliant Canadian innovator Norman McLaren animates people though the magic of pixilation stop-motion in Two Bagatelles (1953). Another Canadian, Co Hoedeman animates Russian dolls dancing in Matrioska (1970).  Fall in love when your toys come to life in Ivo Caprino's enchanting Steadfast Tin Soldier (1955) in gorgeous Technicolor. Practical-special effects legend Ray Harryhausen gives us a sweet puppet version of Hansel and Gretel (1951). Will "California Raisins" Vinton turns Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle (1978) into a psychedelic claymation freak out! And see if you can identify if The Shivering King is in fact a Jiri Trnka Czech puppet film or not! With more surprises in store! And it wouldn't be a stop-motion explosion without the hand-carved art deco bandstand of George Pal's Puppetoon: Cavalcade of Music (1934). Come early to catch The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1986), an ABC weekend special with the mousy voice talents of Zelda Rubinstein and Billy Barty. It's a night one million minute movements in the making!


Date: Thursday, March 12th, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Learn Your Lesson's 2-Year Anniversary: Shockucation's Greatest Hits - Fri. Mar. 6th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson... 2 Year Anniversary: Shockucation's Greatest Hits, the 25th 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 24 months of digging out the best and worst the archive has to offer, we are celebrating our 2 Year Anniversary with a sampler of all our favorite lessons thus far including sex, drugs, and the creepiest of creepy puppets. Get rappin' about fast food and vegetables in the gut-busting craptacular Fast Food: What's in it for You? (1988).  Watch out for easy girls on the street, they just might be hankering to give you VD, in an itchy excerpt from our favorite syphilitic scare film, The Innocent Party (1958). Teen girls need to watch out for intruders, even when they inexplicably become your instructor of Self-Defense for Girls (1969).  What better way to learn not to drink the poisons in your medicine cabinet than to have the bottles sing to you in the baffling mini-cartoon musical Sniffy Escapes Poisoning (1967).  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). And yet, the creepiest puppet award goes to the clown puppet that will turn you invisible to see all your long-suffering parents do for you in the comically-dubbed Parents: Who Needs Them? (1971). 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).  See historical women through the ages not-talk about their menstrual pains in the opening segment of Cramps! (1983). And even more surprises and snippets!   



Date: Friday, March 6th, 2014 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

Fantasmes Français - Fresh French Discoveries - Thur. Mar. 5th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Fantasmes Français with an almost entirely newly-unearthed slate of marvelous and award-winning French shorts from the likes of Pierre Etaix, Claude Berri, Jean Mitry, Robert Enrico, and Jean L'Hôte. This multi-genred program features everything from farce to experimental to animation with chilling, heart-warming, hilarious and animated shorts dug out of our 40,000 16mm film archive. The hilarious Pierre Etaix wrote, directed and stars in the delightful vampire tale Insomnie (1963).   Robert Enrico's Chickamauga (1962) is a brilliant, dark and surreal retelling of Ambrose Bierce's civil war story of a deaf-mute boy's interpretation of one of the bloodiest battles in the American Civil War.  A man gets trapped inside a rather-huge church bell and wreaks havoc and hilarity all over Paris in Jean L'Hôte's silent-inspired slapstick farce La Cloche (1964). Jean Mitry gives us a symphony of locomotive and musical artistry in the beautiful avant-garde piece Pacific 231 (1949). And for a little abstract French animation, we have a double shot of Oscar-nominated animator Jean-Charles Meunier, Hypothèse Beta (1967) and The Glob Family (1970).  Early birds will be treated to another Oscar-winning delight One Eyed Men Are Kings (1974).   


Date: Thursday, March 5th, 2015 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com