Date: Thursday, August 6h, 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
"These are not Hollywood sound effects. This is the music that plays every night in London; the symphony of war."
An effectively didactic wartime newsreel touting London's strength in the face of nightly Nazi blitz attacks. A sobering (but oddly humorous) account of the destruction of hundreds of buildings in the historic city, but never the spirit of Londoners. Produced by the GPO Film Unit, this little slice of British propaganda was distributed in America to sway public sentiment towards entering the war in Europe and to prove to the world that with a stiff upper lip, London can take it!
"There is no panic, no fear, no despair in Londontown. There is nothing but determination, confidence, and high courage among the people on Churchill's Island."
Lichtenstein in London (1968, Color, Bruce Beresford)
Amelia and the Angel (B+W, 1957, Ken Russell)
An utterly charming early short from one of Britain's most iconoclastic directors, the late great Ken Russell (Tommy, Altered States, The Devils). The almost too adorable Amelia (played by Argentinian moppet Mercedes Quadros) is getting ready for her stage debut as an angel with her dance class. Against the teacher's advice, she borrows her wings to take home to show her mother. But as her brother is a "horrible little beast", he absconds with the wings and destroys them summarily. Amelia must run all over the city to find a new pair of wings before her performance. As she runs through the streets of post-war London, she runs into obstacles and colorful characters aplenty (including an equally adorable circus dog) in her quest to redeem herself. While markedly more tame than Russell's work from the 70s and 80s, it is clearly his own with echoes of the themes of the absurdities of faith and a theatricality that would persist through most of his work. Ethereal, entertaining and inspiring, it's a rare treat from a Master.
Opus (Color, 1967, excerpt)
Produced for world-wide distribution for the British Government (Central Office of Information) and for continuous showing in the British Pavilion of Expo ’67, Montreal was directed by famed experimental filmmaker Don Levy. This film is a fascinating tour-de-force montage of British art, architecture, theater and fashions-all that was shocking in 1967. Opus is a whirlwind of music and montage of modern British machine sculptors and swingin’ British fashions, cars and lifestyles!
Black Cap Drag (Color, 1969)It's London, 1969 and the world is in full groovy swing. At the New Black Cap in Camden, two performers steal the show, and reveal themselves and their stories to the viewer. Full of heart as well as humor, fun and fabulousness, Black Cap Drag is a remarkable and rare document of two men who can't wait to get dressed like Barbra Streisand and Marlene Dietrich. One of the first queer safe spaces in England - at a time when homosexuality was still illegal - the Black Cap recently closed its doors after five decades, as its building is sleighted for development, prompting protestors to rally for the iconic venue. A tribute to the dearly departed night club will be held in August at a BFI retrospective featuring a screening of this film, digitally transferred and provided by Oddball Films (we will be watching the original 16mm print)
The Dave Clark Five (Technicolor, 1965)
After conquering America with their stomping beat, the DC5 make a triumphant return to the London borough of Tottenham and it’s all related in breathless Pathe Newsreel style voiceover! Plenty of sumptuous color, fan pandemonium, and "attending to their hair-dos" as the 5 perform “Bits and Pieces” and “Glad All Over”.
About Oddball FilmsOddball 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.