Date: Friday, February 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 Featuring:
Anemic Cinema
(1926, B+W, Silent)
Directed by Marcel Duchamp and
Man Ray
“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to
avoid conforming to my own taste.”
-Marcel Duchamp
The only film to come from the
founder of the artistic and literary Dadaism movement from 1916-1923 “Anemic
Cinema” is an abstract and annalistic film short containing rotating circles
and spirals interlaced with spinning discs of words strung together in
elaborate nonsensical French puns.
"Duchamp
used the initial payment on his inheritance to make a film and to go into the
art business. The film, shot in Man Ray's studio with the help of
cinematographer Marc Allégret, was a seven-minute animation of nine punning
phrases by his alter ego Rrose Sélavy. These had been pasted, letter by letter,
in a spiral pattern on round black discs that were then glued to phonograph
records; the slowly revolving texts alternate with shots of Duchamp's Discs
Bearing Spirals, ten abstract designs whose turning makes them appear to move
backward and forward in an erotic rhythm. The little film, which Duchamp called
Anemic Cinema, had its premiere that August at a private screening room in
Paris." -Calvin Tomkins
L’Etoile des Mer (Dir.
Man Ray, B+W, 1928)
"Some of the most complete and satisfying works of art have been produced when their authors had no idea of creating a work of art, but were concerned with the expression of an idea." - Man Ray.
A classic of Surrealist cinema, Man Ray’s L’Etoile des Mer
(Starfish) is a haunting, dreamlike ode to subconscious sexual desire, inspired
by a poem from Robert Desnos and starring the iconic Kiki of Montparnasse.
In the modernist high tide of 1920s
experimental filmmaking, L’Etoile de Mer is a perverse moment of grace, a
demonstration that the cinema went farther in its great silent decade than most
filmmakers today could ever imagine. Surrealist photographer Man Ray’s film
collides words with images (the intertitles are from an otherwise lost work by
poet Robert Desnos) to make us psychological witnesses, voyeurs of a kind, to a
sexual encounter. A character picks up a woman who is selling newspapers. She undresses
for him, but then he seems to leave her. Less interested in her than in the
weight she uses to keep her newspapers from blowing away, the man lovingly
explores the perceptions generated by her paperweight, a starfish in a
glass tube. As the man looks at the starfish, we become aware through his gaze
of metaphors for cinema, and for vision itself, in lyrical shots of distorted
perception that imply hallucinatory, almost masturbatory sexuality.-Donald
Faulkner
Dada (1967, B+W) Directed by Greta
Deses
Arp declared: “Tzara
invented the word”. . . “on February
the 6th 1916 at 18:00 hrs. I was there
with my twelve children when Tzara pronounced the word for the first time. It was at the cafe de la Terrasse in Zurich
and I had a bun in my left nostril.”
This brilliant (and rare) film
celebrates 50 years of Dadist art and cinema, featuring a discussion about the
history and influence of Dadaism from leading German, French and English
exponents including live appearances by Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Man Ray,
Hans Richter, all considered some of the most influential and important artists
of the 20th century. The film is peppered with film clips and examples of their
works including a reenactment of a Cabaret Voltaire performance with Dadist
Jean Arp playing piano. A bizarre and brilliant documentary rarely seen since
its premiere at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival.
Un Chien Andalou
(“The Andalusian Dog”, B+W, 1928)
Made in France by the brilliant Spanish
director Luis Buñuel and the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. Un Chien Andalou is
one of the best-known surrealist films of the avant-garde movement of the
1920s. It uses dream logic that can be described in terms of then-popular
Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes that
attempt to shock the viewer's inner psyche. Its opening scene is one of the
most famous in cinema history.
The Hearts of Age (B+W,
1934)
Back in the summer of
1934 Orson Welles, only 19 years old, joined up with William Vance, a high
school friend, and shot The Hearts
of Age. It ran eight short minutes and featured four cast members: Welles,
Vance, Virginia Nicholson (Welles’ girlfriend and eventual first wife)
and Paul Edgerton. Meanwhile, the plot was surreal, cryptic, hard to
follow — all for a good reason. The film's action, such as it is, is intercut
with random shots of bells, headstones, a church cross and other images, some times
printed in negative.
In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Welles claimed
that The Hearts of Age was
nothing but a parody of Jean Cocteau’s first film, The Blood of a Poet (1930). It was also a “joke,” a film
“shot in two hours, for fun, one Sunday afternoon. It has no sort of meaning.”
Some d critics disagree and claim the film lays the foundation for Welles
brilliant future work.
Help, My Snowman’s
Burning Down (Color, 1964)
This academy award-nominated short (and winner
of 14 international awards) by Carson
Davidson stars Bob Larkin (later in the cult film Putney Swope) as a Beatnik
who lives on a boat dock off Manhattan with only bathroom furnishings. A visceral tapestry woven together by stop
motion and surreal special effects, this is a mind-bending film you can’t
afford to miss.
Fantasy (Color,
1976)
A hallucinatory handmade film from San Francisco animation
legend Vince Collins evokes his particular brand of surrealist psychedelia.
Your Face (Color,
1987)
This film set the style and started the career of famed animator Bill
Plympton. One of the most popular short films ever made, it’s still showing all
over the world. As a second-rate crooner sings about the beauties of his
lover’s face, his own face metamorphosizes into the most surreal shapes and
contortions imaginable. The music was written and sung by Maureen McElheron,
then slowed to sound like a man’s voice because Plympton was too cheap to hire
a male singer. Your Face earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated
Short in 1988.
Dough for the Do-Do
(Technicolor, 1949)
This Merrie Melodies short is a stunning animated tribute (and
satire) to surrealism. In a background reminiscent of Salvador Dali and Krazy Kat, Porky Pig
hunts a "Do-Do Bird" in "Darkest Africa," where he
encounters strange creatures and landscape in "Wackyland." The strangest of all is the "last
do-do," who turns out not to be the last at all. Directed by Bob Clampett
and Friz Feleng with music by the great Carl Stalling and the voice of Mel
Blanc.
|
About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.