Off the Canvas - Art in Motion - Thur. Jan. 31 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Off the Canvas - Art in Motion, a lush evening of moving artistry. With a who's who of kinetic art as well as some beautiful pieces of the fluid process of creativity, it's a visually enticing and inspiringly creative program. Films include the mesmerizing documentary Kinetic Art in Paris (1971), a viscerally challenging, kaleidoscopic homage to light, sound and motion featuring some of the world’s foremost kinetic artists.  Belgian documentarian Paul Haesaerts attains intimate access to Picasso's artistic process with the help of giant panes of glass in the eye-popping A Visit to Picasso (1949).  See the inventive motile sculptures of Len Lye in an excerpt from the dynamic documentary Art of the Sixties (1968).  Innovator of the mobile and sculpture superstar, Alexander Calder plays and performs with his miniature hand-crafted kinetic circus in the charming Calder's Circus (1963).  George Kuchar brings us a fun and frenzied portrait of his friend and local artist in The Lady From Sands Point (1967).

Date: Thursday, January 31st, 2013 at 8:00PM

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 RSVP (Limited seating) to programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117.

Strange Sinema 60 - The 5 Year Anniversary Spectacular! - Thu. Jan 24 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 60 - The 5 Year Anniversary Spectacular! for its 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 greatest hits film fest includes The Cat Who Drank an Used Too Much  (1987), an Oddball audience favorite about a beer drinking, drug addicted cat, Match Your Mood, a mind-bending advertisement for psychedelic 60's refrigerator covers, Le Monde Du Schizophrene (The World of the Schizophrenic, 1969) A super-surreal, Salvador Dali-like film produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceuticals (Makers of drugs as LSD), Airplane Wing Tests (1960s) sublime aviation film depicting airplane wing tests with a score by Bill Frisell, Help My Snowman is Burning Down (1964) Carson Davison’s award-winning beatnik rhapsody with jazz score by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, The Great Saw Came Nearer and Nearer (1944) a sexist and comedic Soundie featuring Cindy Walker getting terrorized by a beau who will saw her in half unless she marries him!,  Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom (1953), another “beatnik” influenced Academy Award winning short in stunning Technicolor, Green Spot Soda Outtakes (1960s) Soda factory outtakes from the makers of Thai soda pop-watch the bottles fill!, Movie Sideshow (1933), a compendium of human marvels-a man frozen in a block of ice, a human fire extinguisher, a bathtub towing blimp and the strangest wives in captivity!

Plus! free refreshments and double screen burlesque surprises!

Date: Thursday, January 24th, 2013 at 8:00PM

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 RSVP (Limited seating) to programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117.

Carnal Cartoons - Fri. Jan. 25 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Carnal Cartoons, a program of sexy, sinful short animated films from the 1920's through the 1980's.  Cartoons have long offered an option to create any manner of fantastical worlds and exaggerations of our own world.  From the pornographic to the educational, this program offers the sometimes surreal and always imaginative animated interpretations of one of the most important aspects of life, Sex. View the original silent pornographic cartoon Buried Treasure (1928) featuring the hyperbolically endowed Eveready Harton.  Tex Avery brings us a sexy adaptation of an old fairy-tale in Red Hot Red Riding Hood (1943).  Di$ney will scare the pants back on you with VD: Attack Plan (1973).  See an animated version of Sally Rand's infamous burlesque number, the Bubble Dance in Merrie Melodies' Hollywood Steps Out (1934).  A father attempts to explain the facts of life with the help of narration by Peter Sellers in Birds, Bees and Storks (1965).  Sandy Sunrise may be animated, but she's still got needs as we see in the bizarre pornographic short Sandy Sunrise in The Babysitter (1971). Plus! Sex, Booze and those Pills you Use (1982) and even more sexy surprises!

Date: Friday, January 18th, 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

End of the Reel: An Oddball Memoriam 2012 - Thur. Jan 17 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present End of the Reel: An Oddball Memoriam 2012. Each year brings a varied roster of newly gone-but-not-forgotten figures and we present a varied and freewheeling look back at a few. Chris Marker’s haunting time travel tale La Jetée (1962) has had a broad influence in many genres in the 50 years since its release and remains gripping. Maurice Sendak’s swinging kitchen metropolis, In the Night Kitchen (1975), is just familiar enough to be the stuff of dreams. Were the Monkees a fake pop band or a real TV show? Who cares? Davy Jones and gang cut up in a colorful reel of Monkees Outtakes (c. 1966).  A decade before the trill of a sitar became pop cultural shorthand for groovy, Ravi Shankar was making inroads toward a Western audience with projects like Norman McLaren’s A Chairy Tale (1957). We will also feature many more of the recently departed in shorter snippets of news and variety show excerpts. The curator’s notorious home-baked gingerbread will be among the complimentary home-baked treats for all.

Hey! Not so Past!

Date: Thursday, January 17, 2012 at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

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

Portholes to the Past - Fri. Jan. 18 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Portholes to the Past, an exploration of and tribute to the ancient imagination, centered on (but not limited to) classical Greek mythology.  Commencing our tour through antiquity, we’ll soar over the splendid Mayan ruins of Sentinels of Silence (1971), the award-winning documentary narrated by that deity of cinema Orson Welles.  We’ll then head to Greece for Galathea: Das Lebende Marmorbild (1935), wherein the myth of Pygmalion—a sculptor who falls in love with his statue after a goddess brings it to life--is rendered through the ever-elegant silhouette cutouts of pioneering German animator Lotte Reiniger.  Then, the part-educational-documentary, part-mythological-reenactment, The Greek Myths: Myth as Fiction, History, and Ritual (1972), a whirlwind of a film that combines live action and animation, covering three favorite myths (most prominently showcasing that fearsome battle in the heart of the Minotaur’s maze), in addition to taking on questions of modern interpretation.  Rounding out our program’s Greek center is an animated version of that classic quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason and the Argonauts (1987).  And, finally, we’ll conclude the night on a more modern note, with a man who internalized the ancients and laced his own stories with myths and mysteries, as we delve into The Inner World of Jorge Luis Borges (1972).

Date: Friday, January 18th, 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

Triple Fisher - The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island - Fri. Jan. 11 - 8PM

San Francisco Premiere with the Filmmaker, Dan Kapelovitz In Person!

Oddball Films welcomes filmmaker Dan Kapelovitz with the San Francisco Premiere of Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island, a scathing critique/celebration of early-’90s tabloid culture, twenty years in the making! In 1992, a suburban New York teenager named Amy Fisher captured the national media’s attention when she shot her lover’s wife in the face. This sordid tale of underage sex, aggravated assault, and Joey Buttafuoco managed to spawn not one, not two, but three separate made-for-TV movies — a television first. Drew Barrymore (The Amy Fisher Story), Alyssa Milano (Casualties of Love: The “Long Island Lolita” Story) and Noëlle Parker (Lethal Lolita — Amy Fisher: My Story) all took stabs at portraying the disturbed young lady, yet a true on-screen depiction of Amy Fisher has never emerged — until now. In this Rashomon of found footage film, director Dan Kapelovitz (“Threee Geniuses”) mind-melds the multiple melodramas into one ultimate metadrama mashup.  The filmmaker will be here, in person, to answer your burning questions and one lucky audience member will win a copy of Amy Fisher's autobiography; Amy Fisher: My Story!

Date: Friday, January 11th, 2013 at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

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

I Want it All! - Consumer Culture on the Skids- Thur. Jan. 10th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents I Want it All! - Consumer Culture on the Skids, a program of vintage films that fall on both sides of the issue of wealth, consumption, and advertising.  With long and short-form commercials, cartoons and capitalist-skewering satire, it's an evening that will make you think differently about pulling out your wallet.  Pick the color of you refrigerator to Match Your Mood (1960s), or the color of your shiny new Chevy in The Rainbow is Yours (1950s).  Woody Allen and Joanne Worley try to answer that burning question in a segment from the show Hot Dog-How Do They Make Dollar Bills (1971).  Learn how credit can change your life, or just burden you with crap in the bizarre and hilarious The Good, Good, Good Life (1974).  Mid-century animation marvel Ersatz (1961), features everything you need to have a gas at the beach, until your dreams deflate. The brilliant Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett’s Very Nice, Very Nice(1961) utilizes a unique juxtaposition of sound and image to produce a sardonic re-reading of 1950s consumerism, mass media and popular culture.  We all know sex sells; learn the tricks of its best sellers in a Special Edition segment on Frederick's of Hollywood (1970s).  Unrelenting advertisements and the implied pressures impede young love in the charming cartoon Harold and Cynthia (1971).  Plus, a slew of real commercials and a reel of bizarre faux commercials with the head-scratching It's Not Commercial (1950s).  

Date: Thursday, January 10th, 2013 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