Date: Thursday, May 28th, 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
Highlights Include:
Why Not Be Beautiful? (Color, 1969)
"Every young girl can be beautiful." While this beauty primer begins with a broad and semi-enlightened view of beauty; pressing girls to read and be interested in the world around them, it quickly devolves into social conditioning for the non-feminist young woman, teaching her all the best ways to be attractive to the opposite sex. Learn how to make-up your face, dress yourself and how to shut-up when men are talking, because beauty isn't just skin deep, it also means silencing yourself.
Cindy is sad, she's all alone now that her best girlfriends have all left town after graduation to study in their chosen fields (you know, secretarial and teaching of course). But Cindy doesn't have a career path, just a great hairdo. That is until Cindy meets with an older friend who's having a fabulous time in Beauty School. Suddenly, the path becomes clear, and Cindy enrolls the very next day. See what she learns to make every woman as beautiful as she can.
Elsa (Color, 1982)
A hilarious satire of gender roles from Finnish director Marja Pensala. A man speaks about his family's decision to move to the country and adopt a simpler way of life. In every shot, as the man relaxes and enjoys himself, we can see his wife Elsa doing all the strenuous and difficult work in their little off-grid paradise; from chopping wood to laundry to bricklaying, and all while she's pregnant.
The Trouble With Women (1959, B+W)
This industrial training film illustrates some of the perceived gender problems a male supervisor might face working with women, but ultimately demonstrates where the real problem lies. So, what IS Brad's problem?
I’ve Got a Woman Boss! (Color, 1977)
With Women’s Lib and the ERA, what’s a man to do when his higher ups hire a girl to do a man’s job? Learn all about how to deal with a woman in a position of power in this delightful corporate education cartoon from the age of bra burning and glass ceilings. Shown from Mitt Mittel's point of view, this angry little man can't even comprehend how a woman could not only become his superior, but be a superior one at that!
Do I Want to Be a Secretary? (Color, 1954) Betty’s been showing some talent on the typewriter of late, so with the encouragement of her teacher and guidance counselor, and armed with the results ofher Vocational Interest Inventory, she decides to look into possible careers. Her neighbor’s a secretary in an office, so why not stop by and check that out? It looks like a fit!
Splits, Spares and Strikes (B+W, 1941)Watch out boys, the ladies are taking over the bowling alley, so what better to do than patronize their efforts with offensive voiceover? Isn't it quaint that Tillie Taylor is the ladies' world champion of bowling, but wouldn't we rather talk about her outfit and that fat woman over there the narrator so sweetly refers to as "Tiny"?
Battle of the Bulge (B+W, 1951)Part of the Variety View series, this antiquated and offensive "comedy" short aims to keep women in their place by joking about their rotundness and their men's displeasure. The narrator follows several women who are overweight and offers various advice and instructions on how to thin down for your ungrateful husband! Written and directed by Arthur Cohen of the "Brooklyn Goes To..." series and narrated by Phil Foster from Laverne and Shirley.
Curator’s Biography
Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our screenings 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.