Date: Friday, December 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 Featuring:
What's on your Mind? (B+W, 1956)
A shocking early short from the National Film Board of Canada about psychiatry. See the mind of a deranged schizophrenic and follow scores of mal-adjusted people discover the plentiful ways in which 1950s psychiatry offered as help in re-normalizing the human mind, including group therapy and a disturbing and unapologetic shock therapy sequence.
Silent Snow, Secret Snow (B+W, 1966)
A stark and chilling tale of a teen boy's onset of schizophrenia, demonstrated by the voices in his head beckoning him further and further into a comforting silent world of snow. More of a psychological horror film than an educational one, this bleak adaptation of a Conrad Aiken story has never been screened at Oddball before, and it's about snowy time! Directed by Gene Kearney, screenwriter of the bunny-rabbit horror film The Night of the Lepus.
Control Your Emotions (B+W, 1950)In this classic mental-hygiene primer from Coronet Films, A white coat scientist introduces the range of emotions in relation to a burning fire. Then, we visit with angry Jeff who gets upset at school and loses his cool (and his sh*t) all over town.
Help Me! The Story of a Teenage Suicide (Color, 1977, excerpt)
Sandy, a teenager facing a crisis in her life, commits suicide. Through watching her and the reactions of her parents, teachers and friends to her problems and confusions, the viewer is led to see some of the reasons for her suicide and what might have been done to prevent it.
Age of Turmoil (B+W, 1953)
This educational film outlines the developmental changes teenagers undergo for the benefit of concerned parents. The focus lies in an obsession with normality; an assurance “that giggling, that unconstructive criticism of school, the criticism of families, and the unrealistic ideas of their own future,” are not to be feared, but understood with patience. Age of Turmoil offers an antidote to the delinquency films of the period,
assuring adults that teens will one day gain some sanity.
The Fun of Making Friends (B+W, 1950)
Joey wants a friend...desperately! Some how he has made it to age 9 or 10 without ever having made a friend. When he goes to his mother for advice, she gives him four simple rules for making friends all over town.
Junior High: A Time of Change (Color, early 1960s)
Why do they separate the pubescent kids from everyone else? Because Jr. High is when children are most annoying! Learn about your changing body and attitude and discover that it's perfectly normal that you're still a shrimp even though girls your age are already towering over you, because you've got the answer in science class. Don't worry, puberty is awful for everyone, and that's perfectly normal.
Curator’s Biography
Kat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009. She has programmed over 200 shows at Oddball on everything from puberty primers to experimental animation.
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.