Aqua Frolics - Underwater Adventures - Thurs. Oct. 2nd - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Aqua Frolics - Underwater Adventures, an evening of antique aquatic wonderment.  From Jacques Cousteau to underwater capers, surfing pin-ups and visionary Czech mixed-media, cartoons and more. The oceanic oddities include a large excerpt of The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958), an awe-inspiring and surreal vision of Verne’s novel “Face au drapeau” (“Facing the Flag”) with hand-painted backdrops, puppet fish and even an attack from a giant octopus, directed by legendary Czech animator Karel Zeman. Dive into the deep for some synchronized swimming and a turkey dinner with the underwater wackiness of Aqua Frolics (1950).  Fishies get a shot at Hollywood glamour when Porky's variety store shipment sinks to the ocean floor in Bob Clampett's cartoon Porky's Five and Ten (1938). Join Jacques Cousteau and his crew as they discover the mating habits of elusive cephalopods in The Night of the Squid (1970), an enthralling episode of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Pretty pin-ups ride long-boards on the waves in the newsreel oddity Surfboard Rhythm (1947). Puppet pals and scuba-gear help our hero Diver Dan as he squares off against an evil underwater king in Secret of the Throne (1963). So, take the plunge and dive into an ocean of celluloid swimmers and sea creatures all on 16mm film.

Date: Thursday, October 2nd, 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

The Cartoon Genius of Chuck Jones - Fri. Sep. 26 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present The Cartoon Genius of Chuck Jones, a night of cartoon hilarity from the brilliant mind of 4-time Oscar-winning animator Chuck Jones with some of his greatest shorts from the 1930s-1970s.  From iconic characters to esoteric flights of fancy to wartime propaganda, this program offers a mere sampling of Jones' prodigious career spanning 7 decades and over 250 films.  Chuck's first Oscar was rewarded for the stinky love story of Pepe Le Pew and Penelope Pussycat, For Scent-imental Reasons (1949). His third winner The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1965) is a love story of a more geometric sort and call for creativity and individuality.  One of his first shorts Naughty But Mice (1939) features a very drunk mouse (Sniffles) and his wild drug store hallucinations. Bugs and Daffy get into semantics and Bugs slips into ladies' clothes in one of the best Bugs Bunny shorts, Rabbit Seasoning (1952). Jones helps fight malaria in the wartime propaganda piece Pvt. Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (1944).  Henery Hawk may only be a baby chicken hawk, but he won't be satisfied until he's got his chicken dinner in The Squawkin' Hawk (1942). One adorable squirrel must match wits against a coconut in Much Ado About Nutting (1952).  Ralph Wolf is no match for Sam Sheepdog in Sheep Ahoy (1953).  Herbie and Bertie make Claude the Cat think he is dead in Hypo-Chondri-Cat (1950). Charlie the Dog heads to Italy and sings for his dinner in A Hound for Trouble (1951). Is it mass-hallucinations or is it really the world's tiniest elephant in Punch Trunk (1952)? Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian square off in outer space in Duck Dodgers of the 24 1/2th Century (1952). In Is There a Doctor in the Mouse (1964), Jerry has invented a super-speed formula and Tom must film him in the act to discover his speedy secret. And speaking of speed, no Chuck Jones show would be complete without a zippy (and Oscar nominated) entry from Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, Beep Prepared (1961) featuring a delightfully strange arsenal from Acme. Come early for the enduring tale of a brave mongoose; Rudyard Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975). All films will be screened on 16mm prints from the archive and we'll be having a raffle for Chuck Jones goodies courtesy of the Chuck Jones Foundation!

Date: Friday, September 26th, 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/2014/09/the-cartoon-genius-of-chuck-jones-fri.html

Cine-Collage - Remixing the Moving Image - Thur. Sep 25 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Cine-Collage - Remixing the Moving Image, a program of collage films and animations all made decades before digital editing and youtube with works by Bruce Conner, Chuck Braverman, Arthur Lipsett, Frank Mouris, Animal Charm, Martin Arnold and even Tex Avery. Collage film began with the clever and brilliant Bruce Conner in the 1950s, recontextualizing bits of found footage and other film into a new, and completely unique message. While today, video mash-ups are plentiful and relatively easy to produce with the advent of digital editing, in the 1950s and 1960s, these films were made by spending hours and days literally cutting and pasting pieces of films together, or in the 80s and 90s, working on cumbersome non-linear editing bays. We will begin the program with Tex Avery's Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938), in which Daffy runs amuck in the editing house and creates the very first collage film. Bruce Conner remixes the Kennedy assassination in Report (1967). With 3 works from the kinestatic collage master Charles Braverman including Braverman's Condensed Cream of the Be@tles (1974), Television Land (1971) and Nixon: Checkers to Watergate (1976) all employing Braverman's pulsating and rhythmic editing style and wit. Frank and Caroline Mouris create a moving collage of a different sort by cutting out thousands of magazine images and animating them to dazzling effect in the Oscar winning Frank Film (1973). Arthur Lipsett gives us the rise and fall of a global technocracy in his wryly crafted A Trip Down Memory Lane (1965). As video entered the playing field in the 1980s, a new brand of collage film was born, focusing more on the manipulation of single or double source clips, wherein clever repetition and the technique of "scratching" the image as in a record, yields new insights into previously discarded or discounted footage. Animal Charm's witty re-workings of found VHS predated the likes of TV Carnage and Everything is Terrible. Their hilarious short Family Court (1998, video) deconstructs family playtime into an absurd visual tennis match. Martin Arnold utilizes classic Hollywood film for his source material; In Passage A L'Acte (1993, video), he remixes a 30 second clip of To Kill a Mockingbird to highlight every single subtle nuance you might have missed in real time. Plus, an unintentional collage film, the infamous Mandatory Edits reel, compiled entirely of film clips that were deemed inappropriate for television. All films screened on 16mm film from the archive, except where otherwise noted.

Date: Thursday, September 25th, 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/2014/09/cine-collage-remixing-moving-image-thur.html

Strange Sinema 80: Trance Cinema - Fri. Sep. 19 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 80^th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema: Trance Cinema is an exploration into the cinematic documentation of altered states. Drawing on rare ethnographic and experimental acquisitions from the archives, this program showcases powerful healing ceremonies, ceremonial dances and ritualized trance states from around the world. Films include Anastenaria (1970), a rare documentation of surviving Dionastic worship in Greece featuring ritualized slaughter and a breathtaking fire walking ritual. Pomo Shaman (1964), in another rarely recorded ritual, Essie Parrish, a Southwestern Pomo Indian doctor enters a trance and cures a patient with the aid of a spiritual instrument used to suck out the patient’s illness. In another film, famed anthropologist Jon Marshall documents a all-night medicine dance in the Kalahari Desert in N/um tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (1950s).   Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is legendary filmmaker Maya Deren’s ground-breaking experimental dream-like trance film. Buck Dancer (1965) is acclaimed ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax’s mesmerizing musical artifact featuring Mississippi fife player/buck dancer Ed Young. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s famed estactic iconographic study Trance and Dance in Bali (1937-39) filmed in the village of Pagoetan, records a performance of the ceremonial Kris (dagger) dance-drama depicts the eternal struggle between the witch (death) and the dragon (life-protecting force). Himalayan Shaman of Northern Nepal (1966) is John and Patricia Hitchcock’s examination of shamanism in the Himalayas including possession and purification and Dream of the Wild Horses (1962) is a cinematic poem utilizing slow motion and soft focus camera to evoke the wild horses of the Camargue District of France, as they roam on the beach running through walls of fire and water. Plus preshow trance patterns for early arrivals!

Date: Friday, September 19th, 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: www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Cinema Soiree with Jim Morton on East German Cinema - Thurs. Sep. 18 - 8PM

Oddball Films welcomes Author and Film Historian Jim Morton for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights.   Film historian and editor of ReSearch’s Incredibly Strange Films, Morton has turned his attention to the films of East Germany and discovered that they are every bit as odd as anything from the West. He will be at Oddball Films for one night only to discuss the films of the former German Democratic Republic, with clips from some of his favorites. Some of these films have not yet been released in United States. Some may never be. Here’s your chance to see what was going on behind the Berlin Wall. Clips include In the Dust of the Stars (1976): A psychedelic science fiction film that is sometimes likened to Barbarella.-—only with cosmonauts; Hot Summer (1968): East Germany’s “Beach party” movie, with girls, bikinis, and the Baltic Sea standing in for the Pacific Ocean; Midnight Review (1962):  An early East German musical that manages to subvert everything the GDR stood for;  Ursula (1978): The most shocking East German film ever made, and it was made for television! and many more East German delights!

Date: Thursday, September 18th, 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

Learn Your Lesson...from the 1980s - A Radical Shockucation - Fri. Sep. 12th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...from the 1980s - A Radical Shockucation, the nineteenth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection.  This month, we are diving straight into the decade of decadence with an entire program of Oddball Premieres including Rapping Nutritional Primers, Christian Sex-Ed, Talking Fire Alarms, Cartoon Drug-Trips and so much more from the totally terrible 80s! Get rappin' about fast food and vegetables in the gut-busting craptacular Fast Food: What's in it for You? (1988).  Confused about your teenage hormones? The Sexual Puzzle: Putting the Pieces Together (1982) will give you a healthy dose of some Christian morality and schmaltzy expository theme songs to help you keep those hormones in check and save it for marriage.  Sick of rude cashiers? Learn all about customer service, Aussie style and find out Doesn't Anybody Care? (1985). One latchkey kid is all alone, until every appliance in the house starts talking and trying to teach her one harrowing lesson after another in Home Alone: You're in Charge (1985).  Go down the face-melting rabbit hole with a teenage junky in the cartoon nightmare Wasted: A True Story (1983) and get sociable with some nose candy, but watch out for that rock in Gina's Story: Cocaine to Crack (1984).  And come early for a special lesson or two from the original Degrassi Junior High (1987).  It's a totally radical night to learn your lesson! 

Date: Friday, September 12th, 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

Mae West, Young Man! - Thur. Sep. 11th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Mae West, Young Man! a night dedicated to the beauty, brains and belly laughs of one of the most entertaining comediennes in history. Mae West was more than a beautiful buxom blonde, she was a quick-witted and gifted comedienne that often wrote her own snappy dialogue including some of the best one-liners of all time.  The centerpiece of the evening, I'm No Angel (1933) is a racy romantic musical comedy starring West and Cary Grant. Mae West sizzles as Tira, a down-on-her-luck circus performer who must face death by putting her head in a lion's mouth to find fame, and face even more dangerous situations to find true love.  Her sharp tongue and bodacious curves light up the Big Top in this raucous Pre-Code feature that Mae wrote herself. Filled with more than enough hilarious zingers and sexual innuendos to have you quoting Miss West for weeks to come.  Before the feature, we will be screening West's strangest television appearance as she plays herself in Mae West Meets Mr. Ed (1964). And if you just can't get enough Mae, come early (7:30 pm) for a comedic look at her stellar career in an ultra rare episode of Wayne and Shuster Take an Affectionate Look at... Mae West (1965). Come on up and see the wit, beauty and talent of the incomparable Mae West!

Date: Thursday, September 11th, 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

What the F(ilm)?! 9 - Fri. Sep. 5th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present What the F(ilm)?! 9: Cine-Insanity from the Archive, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This month, we're going back to completely random programming with Drunk Dogs, Circus Soundies, Gun Safety, Jam Handy, Hammy the Hamster, and Beatnik Oddities just to name a few! When Patches, the St. Bernard, gets drunk at a wedding, it's up to one junior high school science class to find out the best hangover cure in Route One (1976). Come on down to the Swingeroo Circus (1943), a bizarre soundie with creepy cycling clowns, dancing girls in clown suits and more Big Top spectacle.  8 year-olds draw the tale of John's dependence on alcohol and drugs in the knee-slapping howler A Story About Feelings (1981).  Learn gun safety from the NRA and Trigger Happy Harry (1946). Industrial promo giant Jam Handy gives us a tour of a new model home in the kitsch-tacular A New Model For Living (1967). Join Hammy the Hamster and his talking animal friends in a miniature motorboat when Hammy Comes to the Riverbank (1960)  Plus, Don Klugman's beatnik love story I've Got this Problem (1966), a Tina Turner Air Force Commercial and more insane surprises!

Date: Friday, September 5th, 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