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

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

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

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

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

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 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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