Bad Boys: White Men Can Jump - Thurs. Jan 5 - 8pm

Oddball Films and guest curator Christine Kwon present Bad Boys: White Men Can Jump. Who needs colonialism when the coming-of-age of the white man is so much more hilarious? Boxing babies, women-shaking ranchers, and paratrooping snipers were just some of the media-loving models of both good and bad white boys. Spanning the ‘40s to the ‘80s, this program boasts guilty pleasures including a trailer of Chinatown Squad (1935), featuring matinee idol Lyle Talbot, an excerpt from the awe-inducing Bing Crosby Show (‘60s) with special guests the “Young Americans” (think Children of the Corn in choir format), and a medley of confounding psyche shorts teaching young men how to deal with everything from passive-aggressive parents, in Separation/Divorce: It Has Nothing To Do With You (1974), to raging hormones, in A Night Out (1981). Top that off with some droll anti-communist propaganda in A Motion Picture History of the Korean War (1950) and the ever-popular men-at-sea genre in The Voyage of the Mayflower II (1957) to witness a bizarre evolution of the white boy. 

Date: Thursday, January 5th, 2012 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

One In A Million - Fri. Jan 6 - 8pm

Oddball Films and Guest Curator Soumyaa Kapil Behrens present One In A Million, an evening of retro films that look at money and all it could do.  An oft-used plot line, greed, money, promises of gold and a better life have inspired many cinematic ventures.  This group of films looks at traditional ways of spending, glamorizing and literally making money.  Classic shorts like Trader Vic’s Used Cars (1976) show us the fast paced life inside the world of Victor Snyder, a Southern California car salesman peddling the American dream.  Million Dollar Bowling (1950’s) is a creepy and hilarious look at competitive reality game shows as two couples compete for a one million dollar cash prize.  Other gems include the opening sequence from $ (1971) starring Goldie Hawn and Warren Beatty and animated shorts like Buyer Be Wise (1982) starring our favorite D*sney characters and wise old Japanese folklore with Tara the Stonecutter (1955).  Take a closer look at the man on the face of the penny with Face of Lincoln (1955) and enjoy the tactile vibe of cash with Money, Money, Money (1970’s).  Finally, The Money Tree Pt.2 (1983) gives us the perfect dose of campy education as a young middle class couple uses credit to get in more debt than they can manage.  


Date: Friday, January 6 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

Trailer Trash Trivia: B-Movie Trailers from the 1930's - 1970's - Fri. Dec 30 - 8pm


Oddball Films presents Trailer Trash Trivia Night! Come test your knowledge of rare B-Movie, “Art Film”, and vintage XXX spanning form the 1930’s to the 1970’s.  90% of these films sank without a trace, but their garish promotional trailers live on in the massive archives of Oddball Films.  Ranging from 30 seconds to several minutes in length, these promotional shorts for coming attractions were often much more entertaining than the features they promote.  Plus, a short educational film from 1959 entitled We Live in a Trailer. To participate in the Trivia contest all you need to do is correctly guess the film's title before the title comes up on screen and you'll get a trashy trivia prize! This is an evening truly tailored for the Attention Deficit Disordered and the Ultimate Movie Nerd! 
Date: Friday, December 30 at 8:00PM 
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 - Limited seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117

Trailers Include (but not limited to): 

The Possession of Joel Delaney; Dr. Jekyll, Mrs. Hyde; Escape From/Battle for/Conquest of/the Planet of the Apes; Cabaret; Dog Day Afternoon; Airport 1975; Eat My Dust (w/ Ron Howard); Cover Girl Models; Switchblade Sisters; War Goddess; The Big Bus; Zero Population Growth; Little Fauss & Big Halsy; Grave of the Vampire; House of Exorcism; Return of Count Yorga; Play It Again, Sam; Girls in Trouble; Girly; The Student Body; Super Stooges Vs. The Wonder Women; Girls Are For Loving; 1000 Convicts and a Woman; Black Mama/White Mama; Face of Terror (w/ Arch Hall Jr.); Dimension 5; The Secret Passion; Lilith; Dear Heart; Flight From Ashiya; Woman of Straw; Moment to Moment; The Farmer’s Daughter; Obsession; Prime Cut; JD’s Revenge; Mein Kampf; Underworld USA (Sam Fuller); Black Gold; Winterhawk; The Master Gunfighter; Swiss Family Robinson; The Warlord; Take Her She’s Mine; Go-Go Mania; Hitler’s Harlots; Diary of a Young Writer; Raga; Pink Flamingos; Jabberwocky; State of Siege; Truck Stop Women; Seduction of Mimi; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Marijuana; Assassin of Youth; and much more!!

Plus!  Mandatory Edits (color, B&W, c.1950-1965)
Wild compilation of violent, sexual and otherwise “not ready for primetime viewing” film clips, edited into one bizarre reel. It’s as if William Burroughs got into the Saturday afternoon TV-movie vault and applied his “cut-up technique”.


Children of the Cockettes (extended 90 minute roughcut) - Thurs. Dec 29 - 8pm


Oddball Films and Mister WA present Children of the Cockettes (extended 90 minute roughcut). Through the lens of The Cockettes’ heritage, Mister WA explores the free-spirited and non-conformist performance torches carried by the likes of ThrillpeddlersTrannyhack and Peaches ChristThis organically-developed documentary investigates the current resurgence of glam gender performances and theatre of the ridiculous in contemporary San Francisco. The free-form documentary integrates The Cockettes’ esthetics down to its narrative as it weaves a cinematic quilt of queer art, performance, LGBT community, music and glamor unique to San Francisco. This project feeds off of hundreds of hours of video footage gathered in service to local performance community and presents a "Who’s Who" of interconnected Bay area culture vignettes. Come early and catch the pre-show of Cockettes-era footage from the Oddball Film vaults and a live show by performers featured in Children of the Cockettes

The filmmaker and 'original' Cockette Rumi Missabu will be in attendance. Audience feedback and commentary are encouraged as the filmmaker enters his final round of revisions prior to release. Cockette Rumi Missabu’ s cult classic DVD Elevator Girls in Bondage will be available for sale, hand-signed and kissed by Rumi!




Date: Thursday, December 29th, 2011 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco (map)
Admission: $10 - Limited Seating RSVP to 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com

Filmmaker's Bio
Belgian musician, performer and videographer Mister WA has been single-handedly shooting, editing and producing his bastard sequel to David Weissman's celebrated documentary film The Cockettes since 2008. His mission to present the Bay Area performing arts gold mine to the world at large through film and video was kickstarted with his first web-video trailer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe in 2007.

Mister WA Channel
Rumi Missabu's Elevator Girls in Bondage Trailer



Georges Méliès and Other Movie Magic: A Festive Grab Bag - Fri. Dec 23 - 8pm

Oddball Films and Lynn Cursaro present Georges Méliès and Other Movie Magic: A Festive Grab Bag. On the occasion of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, we take a look at the timeless trickery of Georges Méliès with 3 fanciful shorts, The Witch’s Revenge, The Inn Where No Man Sleeps (both from 1903) and Baron Munchausen’s Dream (1911). Charles and Ray Eames’s legacy is highlighted in a current doc, a great excuse to screen the expressive landscape of miniatures, Toccata for Toy Trains (1957). Buddy’s Theatre (1933) takes us out to an old fashion night at the movies. Chopping and scribbling are part of How to Make a Movie without a Camera (c. 1971). Illusion-shattering out-takes of rock group The Monkees provide a peek behind the scenes. With a nod to the festive season we present some mousy merriment: A woodsman’s lunch mishap leads to a visit with party-loving mice in The Rolling Rice Ball (1963), and we visit snowy Eastern Europe for Fritz Freleng’s explosive Mouse Mazurka (1949). Plus a few surprises and complimentary home-baked gingerbread lions for everyone who attends!


Date: Friday, December 23, 2011 at 8:00PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com


Jason Pappariella's Places in Pieces vol.3 - Thurs. Dec 22 - 8pm - FREE!!!

"Jason Pappariella's Places in Pieces series presents rich visual ideas that feel all at once offbeat and familiar”- Michael Robinson. Volume 3 subsists within the framework of the two previous volumes by focusing on the mundane, the peculiar, and the discarded. One difference being instead of concentrating solely on the urban landscape, rural settings are also observed. PIPv3 has a running time of 50 minutes with a soundtrack provided by Adam Parks of Land What Land and Emily Baker. The majority of the videoing took place throughout the southeastern and southwestern United States in 2009. Filmmaker in attendance! 

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Date: Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 at 8:00pm
Admission: Free!!! - Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117

"Jason Pappariella's Places in Pieces series presents rich visual ideas that feel all at once offbeat and familiar within the framework of an abstract travelogue and document. This is balanced with tones of conversational and silent portraiture of different folks encountered along the way in exchanges that feel true to life." 
- Michael Robinson (filmmaker)

Strange Sinema #47 - Sat. Dec 17 - 8pm

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 47, a monthly screening of offbeat films, old gems and newly discovered oddities both entertaining, experimental and eye-opening, all culled from Oddball Films 50,000 film archive. This 47th installment features Red Hot Heat (Sizzling Rhythm with a Beat) from 1937 featuring boogie woogie wildman Maurice Rocco and the Cotton Club Dancers in tinted sepiatone!, It’s Not a Commercial (1950s), WEIRD and way-out creepy commercial parody is equal parts muscleman Joe Weider and David Lynch, Death Valley Thrills (1944) an over-the-top hell ride through Death Valley in a rigged up truck, sand skis and more, California Bound (1939) an extract from the hilarious WC Fields feature, and Library of Congress preserved film It’s a Gift. Two tv talking horse episodes of Mr. Ed, featuring sorority girls and bombshell Mae West, Art of the Persian Carpet (1973) showcasing the fine art and mythology of Iranian carpet weavers, and abstract computer artist John Whitney’s Arabesque (1975) with its mesmerizing Persian inspired patterns and sounds. Don’t miss Daffy Duck Goes to Hollywood (1938) as he creates a spliced up avant garde masterpiece, watch dim-witted dummies in Fraud by Mail (1944) and witness the kooky beatnik inspired animated short Breaking the Habit (1964) by Oscar nominated director Jon Korty!

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Date: Saturday, December 17th, 2011 at 8:00PM

Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117

Cinesex 101 - Fri. Dec 16th - 8pm

Oddball Films presents Cinesex 101. Take notes as guest curator Neil Van Gorder guides you through the facts, pleasures and risks of sex with a collection of instructional, comical and explicit films. Start by learning the basics: Birds, Bees and Storks (1965), an animated satire about a father who sets out to explain the facts of life to his son, but becomes increasingly embarrassed to the point where his explanations are so vague as to be incomprehensible; Flowers and Bees: A Springtime Story (1973) with pollinating bees and blooming flowers shot with time-lapse photography; and HE and SHE part 2 (1970), a "white coater" documentary that teaches the psychological effects of sex and gives tips with visual examples on how to make you a better lover. You’ll be sure to practice safe sex after watching VD: Attack Plan (1972), a D*sn*y camp cartoon classic. Watch in wide-eye wonder as a veteran vd germ in the “contagion corps” outlines how these insidious creatures spread the dreaded syphilis and gonorrhea germs! Watch, listen and learn! With the fundamentals covered, move on to possible applications: in No Help Needed (1940), women explore themselves and each other in this extremely rare vintage lesbian porn film, and in The Closet (1962) a handsome body builder gives a naked man the massage of his life. Get your voyeur on with Girlie Reel (1950’s) as voluptuous strippers wiggle and dance for the camera, and Uncle Si and the Sirens (1938), a rather silly and humorous film about a farmer who buys a television and tries to tune in on various naked ladies. Plus! See how sex sells in the 1970s with a compilation of advertisements and movie trailers.

Date: Friday, Dec. 16th, 2011 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



Featuring: 


VD: Attack Plan  (1972, color)
“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.


Birds, Bees and Storks (1965, color)

A father sets out to explain the facts of life to his son, but becomes increasingly embarrassed to the point where his explanations are so vague as to be incomprehensible. Inspired by Gerard Hoffnung's 1960 book of the same name, this is a delightful and all too familiar study of the embarrassed middle-aged British male, as a father attempts to explain the facts of life to his son but ends up delivering a monologue so packed with euphemisms about birds, bees and butterflies that it ends up being totally incoherent. Produced by the esteemed Halas & Batchelor Animation Studio, the visual style (inspired directly by Hoffnung's drawings) is simple in the extreme - for much of the film, we just watch the father squirming and blushing in his chair, which focuses our attention both on Peter Sellers' monologue and director John Halas' subtle visual characterization, all nervous tics and fidgeting.

Flowers and Bees: A Springtime Story (1973, color)
This film presents lots of time-lapse shots of flowers blooming and bees pollinating them.  The whole film is like discovering a living Georgia O’Keefe paintings. Hooray for Spring!

No Help Needed (1940, B&W)
This film is a rare and vintage print of  lesbian porn from 1940.  A few girls are sitting around in their underwear looking at photos of men. One woman pulls out a very long dildo.  Another strips down to nothing but a pair of shoes.  The women explore themselves and each other.

The Closet (1985, color)
In a blackened room a handsome body builder gives a naked man the massage of his life. There are lots of mesmerizing shots of the bodybuilder karate chopping and drenched in liquids. The Closet is Joe Tiffenbach's best known work. 

Uncle Si and the Sirens (1938, B&W)
An early illicit film in which the recently invented television promises exotic treats. A truly remarkable anticipation of the Internet, drunken Uncle Si escapes to a private room where he turns into a ravenous animal upon seeing the Sirens!

HE and SHE –part 2 - excerpt (1970, color)
A graphic instructional film about foreplay aimed at square and staid American men.  A narrator helps men learn how to touch their penises to a woman’s butt the right way as well the importance of using cunninglus to please a woman. The sequences of foreplay are intercut with sequences of the couple outside hiking, shopping, or frolicking on the beach. Oh, Romance!

Girlie Reel -excerpt (1950s, B&W)
These are various clips of strippers dancing. Perhaps you will see what your grandma looked like dancing up a storm. Clips will include a blonde in a fake Hawaiian outfit jiggling her ass and pretty brunette in flowing robe dancing and wiggling.

Curator Biography:
Neil Van Gorder is an educator and artist who has called the Bay Area home for the last four years. He has been teaching digital media at various institutions of higher education throughout the Bay Area. 






I’m Your Puppet: A Puppet Film Retrospective - Sat. Dec 10 - 8PM


Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter present I’m Your Puppet: A Puppet Film Retrospective. With Muppets fever in the air, Oddball Films brings you a salute to all things puppet, from the lyrical to the absurd, from hand puppets to marionettes to ventriloquist dummies from the 1930s through the 1980s, you’ll wish you had someone’s hand up your back. The program includes marvelous puppet animation from two of the all-time masters; George Pal’s early Puppetoon Cavalcade of Music (1934) and Jiří Trnka’s last masterpiece The Hand (1966). Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas voice baby puppets in the classic Free To Be You and Me sketch Boy Meets Girl (1974). Debbie Reynolds sings to giant marionettes of her famous pals from A Date With Debbie (1960). Puppets teach us things too, like how to be less belligerent in Feelings: Don’t Stay Mad (1972) and why not to take drugs in Deciso 3003 (1982), with puppets by Julie Taymor. And just when you thought it was safe to bring your kids, we’ve got 1930’s puppet burlesque with Doll Dance and man on puppet porn with Beaver Boy (1968). We’ve even found original Muppets trailers and a heaping handfull of puppet commercials to pull all of your strings!

Strike Up The Band
Date: Saturday, December 10th, 2011 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco (map)
Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Highlights include:

Cavalcade of Music (1934, B&W)
Creative force behind some of the most creative monsters in Fantasy film , Hungarian exile George Pal began his career pioneering a method of stop-motion used in his series of Puppetoons, earning him seven consecutive Oscar nominations. In one of his earliest Puppetoons, Cavalcade of Music, Pal creates an epic spectacle of music and dance all with carved wooden puppets. From the chic Art Deco bandstand, to an entire puppet jazz orchestra, to a puppet can-can, this film overwhelms with its imagination and scope.

Don’t let anyone pull your strings
A Date With Debbie (1960, B&W)
America’s sweetheart Debbie Reynolds got her very first television special in 1960, Date With Debbie, written by comic legend Carl Reiner. The musical darling sings, dances and even attempts to make you laugh, interspersed with long form commercials from Revlon. In this segment Debbie sings to her pals, well, to giant caricature marionettes of her famous friends like Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. I guess Revlon couldn’t afford all the appearance fees.

The Hand (1966, Color)
Czech animator Jiří Trnka, known as the “Walt Disney of Eastern Europe” said about puppet films, “Puppet films are truly unlimited in their possibilities: they can express themselves with the greatest force precisely when the realistic expression of the cinematographic image often faces insurmountable obstacles.” He spent most of his career animating adaptations of literature and fairy tales, but in his last film, and often considered his greatest, The Hand, he creates an overtly pessimistic allegory of the oppression of personal freedom and censorship. Banned in Czechoslovakia for two decades.

Boy Meets Girl (1974, Color)
Teens: In Space
From the people that told us it was alright to cry and for boys to have dolls, Free To Be You And Me was the quintessential hippy parenting guide. In this classic sketch from the 1974 television broadcast. Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas take a light-hearted approach to the discussion of gender roles, as two babies postulating on their own sexes. The magic of FTBYAM was its effortless way of making heavy ideas of feminism, consumerism and understanding palatable and entertaining for children and adult-children alike.

Deciso 3003 (1982, Color)
Peter Wallach, Eli Wallach’s brother directed this bizarre anti-drug PSA, in the height of the “Just Say No” ‘80s. Two couples of double-headed alien teens set out on what they think is just going to be any other intergalactic trip to the Drive-In (to see Vincent
Price in The Fly) but when one of them thinks it’ll be cool to take some meteor pills and get handsy with his date, we all learn that being a teenager isn’t easy for anyone in the galaxy. The puppets were made by Julie Taymor, director of Across the Universe and Titus, and Eli Wallach narrates, though neither is credited on the internet movie database. Perhaps, like the teen alien flying home alone, they too feel the shame.


Controlling Your Anger Through Better Puppetry
Feelings: Don’t Stay Mad (1972, Color)
This bizarre and head-scratching PSA attempts to teach children to deal with their anger. Herky and Goonie are two of the ugliest puppets you may ever see, and they seem to be locked in some sort of domestic abuse situation, although it would seem they are only supposed to be 9 year-old children. Goonie is a belligerent, baseball bat wielding maniac, that none of the kids want to play with, but maybe there is hope if he can learn to not stay mad (and put down the baseball bat). There are also some marvelous scenes of precious little girls screaming and beating their pillows mercilessly.

Also Including:

Double-Talk Girl (1942), A Universal Pictures “Popular Person Oddity” with Shirley Dinsdale and her right-hand gal, Judy Splinters. Doll Dance, a 1930s Burlesque tit for tat dance number with Arlene and Rene. Both ladies are lovely, only Arlene has someone pulling her strings. Decades before the rise of “furry” culture, Beaver Boy (1968) is the touching story of a young man, reading quietly by himself, who is propositioned by a fox puppet, a proposition too good to pass up. With special appearances by Lambchop and Hush Puppy, Butch Bear and the Yakimo gang, The Muppets, HR Pufnstuf, puppet commercials and more!



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.





Sweep My Chimney! - Fri. Dec 9 - 8pm




Oddball Films and guest curator Emily Schleiner present Sweep My Chimney! From the Middle Ages, Victorian England, to the Jazz Age, laugh at the silly antics of butlers, chimney sweeps, serving maids and their capaciously demanding aristocratic masters during times of strict social hierarchy! It turns out that dealings between the one percent and ninety-nine percent of society have been tumultuous for centuries; and these films offer a wide and wacky glimpse into the past, evoking uncomfortable shudders and delighted grins, and leaving us wondering at what has changed and what hasn't. The evening’s highlights include two Charlie Chaplin shorts: Mabel’s Married Life (1914) about a husband too wimpy to defend his wife from advances of a stranger, and the adventures of a tailor’s assistant who impersonates a duke at a masquerade in The Count (1916). The comedy continues with Laurel without Hardy in the rarely seen Eve’s Love Letters (1927) in which a woman tries to hide an extra-marital rendezvous with the help of her accident prone butler, Laurel with Hardy in Dirty Work (1933) as the duo attempts chimney sweeping while not interrupting their mad scientist client and Social Sea Lions (1940) featuring playful seals pretending to be kitchen workers.  Watch a servant boy earnestly repeat a tongue twister to his exacting princess and twin dukes, one sane and the other psychotic, face off in a comedy of errors. The Jazz Age chronicles the events and culture of the "Roarin' 20s" including footage of Parisian nightlife, Josephine Baker and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This documentary uses archival footage to vividly illustrate the contrast between the frivolity and wealth of the first part of the decade and despondency after the stock market crash.  Plus! An unintentionally comical 1970’s documentary about Charles Dickens and more!  Whether you enjoy a good comedy or some stinging social commentary, there is something here for everyone! 
Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door. --Charles Dickens




Date: Friday, December 9th, 2011 at 8:00pm.

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

Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117

Program Features:

Fun With Speech, Sounds (1973)
In this film, an adorably costumed king and queen get silly in their animated castle.  The princess teaches a servant boy a tongue-twister, pronouncing her words emphatically and pulling out flash cards.  Will the servant be able to learn?

Mabel's Married Life (1914) 
In this romp of a film, Mabel's wimpy husband, played by Chaplin, won't stand up to an amorous stranger and defend her from his advances. She buys her husband a boxing dummy with the hope it will make a man out of him, but he comes home drunk and mistakes the dummy for the bully and tries to eject it from the house!

The Count (1916)
The tailor's assistant (Chaplin) is dismissed for incompetence at the same time that his boss finds a note from a count declining an invitation to a masquerade party thrown by a wealthy heiress.  His boss decides to attend in disguise! While visiting his friend the cook, the assistant runs into his old boss who owns up to his impersonation and suggests that he act as his secretary.  The assistant gets there first, however, and presents himself as the count and develops his own style of etiquette over dinner, as soup, spaghetti and watermelon are presented to him. 

Twin Dukes and a Duchess (ca. 1920)
This comedy in which a twin duke is sent to an asylum for psychotic and murderous behavior.  When he escapes from the asylum and returns home, he attempts to murder and impersonate his brother, switching clothes with him while still maintaining his own tell-tail maniacally hunched posture.  The good duke is taken to the asylum, and the psychotic one arranges to marry the sane duke's fiance.  Will the psychotic brother get away with marrying his brother’s dame??

Etude (1973)
In this gem of a film, a man walks through a forest wearing fancy clothes.  He approaches a waterfall, and begins conducting music in nature!

The Jazz Age (Parts 1 & 2)
In these films, see social life and customs in America during the 1920s depicted.  This was a prosperous era of excessive pleasure-seeking which has come to be known as the Jazz Age.  Important historical events of the period traced: Part I begins with the Versailles Conference, then reveals a picture of the Harding political campaign and scandal, rise of the Ku Klux Klan, American town life, new manners and morals for women, and widespread use of the automobile.  Other subjects covered include nightclubs of the prohibition era, wild stock market speculation, bootlegging industry, racketeering, and popularity of foreign travel.  Part II shows night life of Paris, Josephine Baker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lindbergh's flight, ticker tape parade,American sports, Hoover campaign, stars of show business, Ziegfeld Follies type dancing, and the stock market crash in 1929.  Illustrated throughout with archive newsreel footage, and narrated by the late Fred Allen!

Social Sea Lions (1940)
No one is useless in this world who lightens 
the burdens of another. -- Charles Dickens
In this unusual and comedic film, three trained sea lions climb a ladder, go through a window, and devour fish canapes and punch being made by a servant inside a house.  They playfully invade the kitchen wearing chef’s hats while a party goes on in the living room.  The sea lions play various pranks undetected!  After everyone goes to bed, one sea lion makes noise in a piano while another one climbs into bed with a gentleman.  This sea lion is a sheet stealer!

Eve’s Love Letters (1927)
In this rare film, Laurel is a butler for a wealthy couple. The wife of the couple receives letters from a “mystery mailer” who blackmails her for past love letters she wrote to Sir Oliver Hardy before her marriage.  The blackmailer asks for $10,000 -- otherwise he will turn her over to her husband! She tries to get Laurel to retrieve those letters by sneaking into her ex-lovers house and shenanegans ensue!  The husband tries to find out where she was while she was out with Laurel but loyal Laurel covers for her with a heroically comedic effort!

It was the best of times, 
it was the worst of times.  – Charles Dickens
Dirty Work (1933)
In this hilarious gem of a film, Laurel and Hardy are chimney sweeps who destroy a chimney in the process of trying to clean it.  The house belongs to a mad scientist experimenting with a youth potion.  The mad scientist invites them to witness an experiment in which he turns a duckling into an egg.  While trying to repeat the experiment with a fish, Hardy falls into the bath with a beaker of potion, and comes out a chimpanzee!

Charles Dickens: An Introduction to His Life and Work (1979)
This documentary chaulk full of re-enactments is an entertaining and informative background to the study of Dickens and his period. Get a sense of the time he lived in when a fictional Victorian audience gathers in a tent to see it all. Bill Marigold regales them with a magic lantern show on the life and work of Charles Dickens. Included are dramatizations from several of Dickens’ novels!


Curator Biography 
Emily Schleiner is a Brooklyn and Davis CA-based new media artist and thinker.  She has been writing since 2009 and has shown internationally.  She has been published in the Trondheim's TEKS's 'Making Reality Real' Journal and has presented at the 2nd Inter-Disciplinary.net Global Conference in Budapest. She received her Masters from Performance and Interactive Media Arts department at Brooklyn College, NY in 2010.