Sexual Miseducation - Thur. July 2nd - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Sexual Miseducation, a night of vintage 16mm sex ed shorts, burlesque, smut and stag films from the 1910s-1970s.  This sinful program features tons of new discoveries from the archive, including one of the very first pornos, stop-motion bean bags getting it on, homegrown local erotica, and even stereoscopic nudies. 
Peter Sellers voices a bumbling father explaining sex to his child in the hilarious Halas and Batchelor cartoon Birds, Bees and Storks (1965).  Find out Are You Ready For Sex? (1978) with the help of a bearded doctor and several melodramatizations.  Hop on board for what some say is America's first hardcore porn (and the only hardcore we will be screening this night), the notorious silent stag film A Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (1915). San Francisco co-stars in The Screening Room (1970s), an erotic tale of two lovers shooting a porno in Renaissance costumes, then seeing themselves on a North Beach screen.  A buxom blonde marionette gets into burlesque with Doll Dance (1940s).  Mrs. John Barrymore does the least enticing striptease you've never seen in the entirely unsexy How to Undress for your Husband (1937).  San Francisco's own radical sexual-awareness ministry the Multi-Media Resource Centers brings us three super short-shorts on the lighter side of sex-ed: bean bag frogs get it on in a variety of human sexual positions in The Love Toad (1970), the all-too sensual act of peeling citrus in Orange (1970), and a hyper-speed sexual rendezvous in A Quickie (1969). Play with your toys in a non-XXX excerpt of bizarro porno Orgy of the Dolls (1970s). Plus, four unscreened 1940s nudie cuties: Busman's Holiday, a film for serious artists only, Fanny with Cheeks of Tan and Tantalizing Torso from Seaside Films, and the double vision of Stereoscopic Smut! Early birds will watch as a high school class makes a film about contraceptives in The Birth Control Movie (1982). 

Date: Thursday, July 2nd, 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: www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com

How to Be an Artist - Fri. June 26 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Christina Yglesias present How to be an Artist. This mix of never before screened gems and oddball classics will include instructional art films, experimental weirdness, sexy sculptors, and meditations on the meaning of art itself. First, see if you have what it takes for a career in the arts with Art Talent Test (1950s) feauturing Michael Kent, "world-renowned talent scout". If you pass the test, move on to Sculpture: Process of Discovery (1975). Rock sculptor Norm Hines will wow you with his thoughtful process and his rock hard abs in this accidentally erotic film. Get a mini fantastical art history lesson with the lovely animated film Seven Arts (1958) in which adorable dinosaurs witness and take part in early humans discovering the arts. Things will get weird with Exquisite Corpse (assembled in 2012), a film created by Oddball audience members from scraps of disparate films. Go beyond the elementary with the funky and fun instructional film Crayon (1964). We'll keep things funky with Art from Found Materials (1971), where one man's trash becomes another man's ugly sculpture. Learn how to keep your paintbrushes happy with Care of Art Materials (1948), an adorable mix of imaginative animation and live action. Now that you've made it this far, get existential with What is Art? Art (1966). The evening will finish with a beautiful, entirely hand-painted film of mysterious origin Kathy's Museum Class (1970's, Color). Early comers will get to see a super-secret behind-the-scenes film. 


Date: Friday, June 26th, 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 

Strange Sinema 89: Visionaries of Time and Space - Thur. June 25 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 films, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 89th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 89: Visionaries of Time and Space, explores artists working with speed and light, time and space. By slowing and accelerating time, compressing and distorting space (and distance), arresting and suggesting movement, these filmmakers explode the boundaries of conventional film, inducing a meditative, trance-inducing and in some cases a near-epileptic response in the viewer. Other artists use new technologies creating invisible art by magnetism, prisms, lights, moving objects, converging lines, and number patterns. Films include the mesmerizing documentary Kinetic Art in Paris (1971), a viscerally challenging, kaleidoscopic homage to the future of perception, featuring some of the world’s foremost kinetic artists; Lapis (1965), made by cinema pioneer James Whitney consisting entirely of hundreds of constantly moving points of light and one of the most accessible experimental films ever made; Art For Tomorrow (1969) an eye-popping exploration of experimental tech-oriented art incorporating early IBM computers, cybernetics, heart beat triggers, and invisible art by magnetism all narrated by Walter Cronkite; Free Fall (1964) famed Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett creates a synesthetic experience through the intensification of image and sound utilizing single-frame editing and tribal music; Maya Deren’s A Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) incorporates film techniques -reprinting, varying camera speeds, and direction and movement of the camera-integrating representational performance art into abstract, non-narrative filmmaking through intersecting currents of subconscious, parallel realities; Paul Roubaix’s Allegro Ma Troppo (1963) is a hyperkinetic vision of Parisian nightlife between 6PM and 6AM, shot at two frames per second utilizing automatic cameras; A Chairy Tale (1957) the surrealistic virtuoso collaboration of three of the geniuses of the National Film Board of Canada; Norman McLaren, Claude Jutra and Evelyn Lambert, about a chair that refuses to be sat upon, forcing a young man to perform an acrobatic and comedic dance with the chair, with music by Ravi Shankar; and The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979) Mike Jitlov’s legendary high speed mind-blowing special effects short.

Date: Thursday, June 25, 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 

Cinema Soiree: Video Synthesizer Works with Denise Gallant of Synopsis Video - Thur. June 18 - 8PM

Oddball Films welcomes award-winning video pioneer Denise Gallant to our Cinema Soiree, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. This show represents 40 years of video effects by Denise Gallant, continually using the Synopsis Video Synthesizer, an early analog synth, designed by Rob Schafer and built by Denise Gallant. The core concept of the Synopsis Video Synth was to be completely interactive with music, which was unique among early video synthesizers. It was also one of the first video synths to make use of the new ‘integrated circuit’ technology, which made the synthesizers much more stable, reliable and smaller, so that they could easily be built into small boxes and carried to live music shows. Gallant will be here in person to discuss the concept and design of the device as well as doing a Live Demo with the Synopsis Synth as well as presenting clips and videos from four periods of work with the Synopsis Synth.  1972-76: Early experiments in sound-controlled video and pre-video synthesizer clips.  1978-80: Live Video Effects at Clubs in San Francisco including video with Tuxedomoon, Indoor Life, Cabaret Voltaire, Group 87, The Humans, Daevid Allen of Gong, and a short interview with Brian Eno from Video West. 1980-86:  Live Video Effects and Edited videos with Suburban Lawns, Wall of VooDoo, Supertramp and selections from Billboard Award Winner “Watercolors” with music by Steve Roach.  Later works (1990+)  Video with dancer Tandy Beal, 1990 corporate work including ABC Elections, Denny Doherty of The Mamas and the Papas, Burning Man projects and NAMM TEC award clips of Eric Burdon and documentary of Slash of Guns & Roses. 

To see a preview of the show that Gallant has compiled: https://vimeo.com/130605068

Date: Thursday, June 18th, 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

OBEY: Brainwashing, Thought-Control and Shock Therapy - Fri. June 19 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents OBEY: Brainwashing, Thought-Control and Shock Therapy, a program of 16mm films from the archive that explore the malleable nature of the human mind and those that would seek to manipulate that nature into obedience and conformity.  From psychology to psychiatry, cults to cartoons; this one-of-a kind program will leave you wondering who is really in control of your brain.  Behold the marvels of "modern" psychiatry in the 1950s, including an unabashed look at shock therapy as one method of mental conditioning in What's on your Mind? (1956).  From one shock, to another; view excerpts from one of the most notorious experiments in the world of psychology in Stanley Milgram's Obedience (1963) featuring the original Milgram Experiment where participants were asked to shock another participant to explore the boundaries of morality in the face of authority. In De Overkant (1966), Belgian filmmaker Herman Wuyts brings us a bleak interpretation of a totalitarian society in which independence equates to death.  Woody Woodpecker gets into the mind-control business in Hypnotic Hick (1953).  The dark animated adaptation of Maurice Ogden's The Hangman (1967) is a chilling vision of the dangers of conformity.  And one young man tells his own story of life in the Moonie church, and the deprogramming that it took to get him out of it, in the rare TV special Moonchild (1983). Early birds will be treated to 1984: Revisited (1983) featuring Walter Cronkite recounting how close society is coming to an Orwellian dystopia of thought police and perennial surveillance (and this was 32 years ago; it's even more pervasive now!).

Date: Friday, June 19th, 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  

Sex, Death and Cartoons - Fri. June 12th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Sex, Death and Cartoons, a program of strange, sexy, dark, sinful and unsettling animation from around the world. From the pornographic to the educational, this program offers the sometimes surreal and always imaginative animated interpretations of two of the most important aspects of life, Sex and Death.   The devilish delights of this program include a pencil-drawn version of a 19th century British folk song Widdecombe Fair (1948) about an ill-fated trip to the fair on an old grey mare for Tom Pierce and a dozen of his closest friends. Tex Avery brings us a sexy adaptation of an old fairy-tale in Red Hot Red Riding Hood (1943). Comic strip Krazy Kat comes back to the big screen to fight off ghosts and other haunts, while his puppy fights with a skeleton in the silly romp Krazy Kat in Krazy Spooks (1933). It might be in Spanish but you won't miss the meaning behind the hilarious cartoon Sex, Booze, Blues and those Pills You Use (1982). 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). The Czechs bring us the morbidly clever cutout animation The Sword (1967).  Peter Foldes and the National Film Board of Canada create a nightmarish vision of excess in the early computer animated stunner Hunger (1974). Betty Boop heads down to Hell and melts the king of the underworld with her icy stares in the jazzy Fleischer Brothers' cartoon Red Hot Mamma (1934). Plus, two of our favorites Bruno Bozzetto's dark and sexy examination of the working man's Freudian subconscious, Ego (1970) and the original pornographic cartoon Buried Treasure (1928) starring Eveready Harton.   

Date: Friday, June 12th at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00, Limited Seating, RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilm.com

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Scientific Psychedelia - Thur. June 11th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Scientific Psychedelia, a program of eye-popping short science and nature films from the 1920s-1980s that capture nature's most surreal, kaleidoscopic and magnificent moments.  From microscopic creatures and processes to a space landscape in 3D, to the intricacies of animal movement, these films will open your eyes to the natural wonders that lay within and beyond our own eyesight.  Join Homer Groening (Matt's father) as he recontextualizes water and creates a Study in Wet (1964). Behold the ghostly landscapes of our closest planet in Mars in 3D: Images from the Viking Mission (1983). Award-wining filmmaker Carroll Ballard’s (The Black Stallion) abstract film Crystallization  (1975) explores the intricate and dazzling formation of crystals in liquids all set to an innovative electronic sound score.  Tiny alien creatures abound in the microscopic slides of photographer-biologist Roman Vishniac, in The Big Little World of Roman Vishniac (1980's), whose wondrously amorphous images come to resemble avant-garde cinema. Go inside one of the world's most controversial flowers and see the life cycle of the heroin poppy using time-lapse photography in the eerie and breathtaking Dream Flowers (1935).  Basic physical principles are the focus of Invisible Forces (1920s), and the visuals of capillary action in sugarcubes will tantalize and mesmerize. Bell Laboratories brings us Laser (1979), another stunner all about harnessing the power of light for medical and scientific purposes. Watch the surreal movements of rays in French medical film Eagle Ray Experiment (1935).   Plus, synthed out close-ups of exotic fish in Aquarium (1978) and another trip through space with NASA in Spaceborne (1977) for the early birds. All films screened in 16mm from the archive.

Date: Thursday, June 11th, 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  

Underground Queer Cinema - Thur. June 4th - 8PM and Fri. June 5th - 10PM

Oddball Films is kicking off pride month with Underground Queer Cinema, a program of vintage 16mm low-budget, high-concept films from the 1950's through the 1970's that defied the boundaries of sexuality, narrative and (at times) good taste; featuring campy drag fairy-tales, homoerotic experimental works, the transgender superstars of Warhol's factory, and more. Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (1964), is an experimental masterpiece of homoeroticism, bikers, occultism and groovy girl groups. The camptastic Sinderella (1962) retells an age-old fairy tale with a dragnificent twist for a new generation. Academy Award winning filmmakers Frank and Caroline Mouris give us Screentest (1975) a compelling and kaleidoscopic portrait of a gender bending acting troop (print courtesy of the Jenni Olson Queer Archive). Get a glimpse inside The Factory with an excerpt from the documentary Andy Warhol (1973) featuring clips of some of Warhol and director Paul Morrissey's audacious early works as well as interviews from superstars. Behind Every Good Man (1966), a rare and understated portrait of an African American transgender woman shopping, cruising and musing in 1960s Los Angeles. Plus! The first openly gay cartoons, The Goofy Gophers (featuring the voice of recently departed comic genius Stan Freberg) in the uncensored Lumber Jerks (1955); a number from legendary San Francisco drag queen Charles Pierce from The Charles Pierce Review (1969), and more surprises.

Date: Thursday, June 4th, 2015 at 8:00pm SOLD OUT!
NEW SHOW ADDED: Friday, June 5th at 10:00pm

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...About Safety: A Dangerous Shockucation - Fri. June 5th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...About Safety: A Dangerous Shockucation, the 27th in a monthly 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 getting safe with exploding dolls, stop-motion creeps, google-eyed punching bags, broken bones, eyeball surgery, monkey children, choking babies and more! Playground Safety: The Peepercorns (1975) warns you to not have too much fun on the playground, unless you want to end up like the peepercorns, a stop-motion gaggle of spherical children with terrible luck on the monkey bars. Much like the peepercorns, the punching-bag shaped Schmoadles have a similar problem with riding the school bus in another head-scratcher from Crocus Productions, School Bus Safety: A Schmoadle Nightmare (1975). Let's set your dolls on fire and explode that mannequin with Chemical Booby Traps (1959), an extra-explosive short from General Electric. Discover the history of CPR and what to do when your baby chokes on plastic or traps itself inside a refrigerator, in the shocking That They May Live (1959). Keep on those shop glasses, or you may end up in eyeball surgery, in the vaguely experimental Don't Push Your Luck (1966). For all the housewives out there, learn how to not make brainless mistakes like the silly woman you are with Cooking: Kitchen Safety (1949). Watch out for the "red light" people in the half- pedestrian safety/ half predator scare film Meeting Strangers: Red Light, Green Light (1969). Early birds can set out on an ill-fated bike ride with ten monkey-headed children in the notorious One Got Fat (1963). Plus, shocking excerpts from shop-safety film It Didn't Have to Happen (1951), door prizes and more special surprises! If you don't learn your lesson tonight, you might not make it until your next field trip!

Date: Friday, June 5th, 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