Visions of Dystopia - Thurs. June 2nd - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Visions of Dystopia, an evening of mind-bending 16mm short films - handpicked from the archive -  that transport us into alternate realities; be it the bleak future, or a dark and dangerous fantasy realm. Chris Marker's enduring sci-fi experiment La Jetee (1962) utilizes still images to portray a post-apocalyptic world of time-travel, torture and lost love. Polish director Jan Habarta's dystopian masterpiece No. 00173 (1967) will blow your mind with it's eery depiction of a grim Kraftwerkian factory momentarily brightened by a colorful butterfly. In De Overkant (1966), Belgian filmmaker Herman Wuyts brings us a bleak interpretation of a totalitarian society in which independence equates to death. A windless future society has one man dreaming of flying a kite, a dream that may lead to doom in the Canadian ultra-rarity Return of the Kitemen (1974). Nedeljko Dragić's Oscar-nominated Tup-Tup (1972) is a darkly-comedic animated commentary on the effects of urbanization from the legendary Zagreb animation studio. Plus, Post-Apocalyptic Trailers and early birds will be treated to three alternate versions of The Future (1980) and (spoiler alert!) they're all bad. This imagined future's so dark, you better leave your shades at home.

Date: Thursday, June 2nd, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Film Under the Influence - Vintage Drug and Alcohol Scare Films - Fri. May 27th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Film Under the Influence - Vintage Drug and Alcohol Scare Films, a program of mind-expanding, terror-intending and hilarity-inducing short 16mm educational films about the dangers of drugs. It's a night of drunk embarrassing moms, rats on drugs, LSD freak-outs, bongo-beating beatniks, piles of pills, afterschool specials, and tons of hilarious new finds from the archive. These classroom classics from the 1960s through the 1980s were meant to scare the pants off the junior-high set but probably encouraged as many to experiment with drugs and alcohol as it discouraged. Join the "now generation" with their wacky tobacky, hallucinogens and goofballs in the mega-hip and stylish Drug Abuse: The Chemical Tomb (1969). One shaggy-haired pre-teen boy has a lot of questions but doesn't get a whole lot of answers in the oddly graphic What Do Drugs Do? (1971). Amanda Wyss from Nightmare on Elm Street has a nightmare of a drunk mother who passes out, ruins parents' day and stumbles into the school play in the ABC Afterschool Special She Drinks a Little (1981). Drop a tab of acid and sing along with the LSD song in the mind-bending hallucinogenic scare film LSD 25 (1967). Everyone's favorite pot-smoking and crime-fighting dog is back in the insane Canadian cartoon Caninabis (1979) and a bunch of drugged-up rats nod off, fall over and run into walls in a clip from Narcotics: The Inside Story (1967). Plus! The acid-soaked trailer for Easy Rider (1969), a barrel full of drug and alcohol PSAs including one from the "Fonz" himself Henry Winkler, an all-star alcoholic spectacular Drink, Drank, Drunk (1974) with Carol Burnett, Morgan Freeman and more for the early birds and more sobering surprises!

Date: Friday, May 27th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Strange Sinema 100: Hypnotica - Thur. May 26th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 100, a monthly evening of newly discovered films, rarities and choice selects from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled this 100th (!) program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This 100th program is a celebration of mesmerizing, hypnotic films, designed to push your perceptual boundaries. Strange Sinema 100: Hypnotica features a stunning, genre twisting mix of seminal, awe inspiring films, from trance-inducing visual poems, stunning Czech stop-motion animation and ethnographic rituals to meditative ruminations on higher consciousness. Films feature Man Ray's surrealist classic L'Etoile de Mer (1928) a haunting, dreamlike ode to subconscious sexual desire, Marcel Duchamp’s ground-breaking Anemic Cinema (1926), a hypnotic exploration of wordplay intermixed with optical illusions,  John Whitney's Arabesque (1975), the legendary masterpiece of shimmering, oscillating waves set to the music of Persian composer Maroocheher Sadeghi, Michael Whitney's Binary Bit Patterns (1969) a hypnotic psych-folk audiovisual experience that suggests a secret symbiosis between the digital and the organic as various Eastern graphic permutations appear, dissolve and undergo metamorphoses on the screen, Lapis (1965), made by a spiritualized James Whitney with handmade cels evoking a single mandala moving within itself; its particles surge around each other in constant metamorphosis, Tanka (1976) David Lebrun’s remarkable and fierce animated vision of ancient gods and demons in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s legendary ethnographic study Trance and Dance in Bali (1937-39), Glittering Song (1965) true hypnotica-this tantalizing object animation brings to life discarded shards of broken glass, transforming the dangerous trash into a sparkling magical world (a huge hit at our Czech stop-motion show), Spacy (1981) a stunning, unforgettable, hypnotic short by Japanese avant-garde maestro Takashi Ito, Dream of Wild Horses (1962), a remarkable cinematic poem using slow motion and soft focus camera to capture the wild horses of the Camargue District of France as they roam on the beach running through walls of fire and water, plus! The animated Felix Hyps the Hippo (1920s), featuring Felix the Cat hypnotizing a hippopotamus!

Date: Thursday, May 26th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com 

Unsound Cinema Soiree with William Davenport - Fri. May 20th - 8PM

Oddball Films invites you to a unique evening of punks, zines and mixtapes with visiting filmmaker and editor of Unsound Magazine, William Davenport for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. Davenport will be showing a sneak preview of his latest film Media About Media About Media: Negativland Story about the internationally known iconoclastic "culture jamming" performance and musical group, as well as discussing and presenting clips from “Unsound Redux”, the docu-series that reveals a story told by a generation of musicians who began 30 years ago and have continued their creative output to today. Before the internet they networked with each other, creating an international community, trading tapes, zines and records. Unsound Magazine was published from 1983-1987. Before the inception of the internet and on the brink of the desktop publishing revolution, Unsound created a forum for outlier musicians and artists to connect. Documentary filmmaker William Davenport was the editor and publisher of Unsound: “I left the music scene many years ago, but found myself interested in finding out what happened to the musicians that filled the pages of Unsound. I was limited by only having the resources to film within the United States, although Unsound magazine had an international scope." Traveling from the East Coast to West Coast, Davenport did interview after interview, and soon discovered links that would develop into the Unsound Redux project, three films emerged: “Great American Cassette Masters”, “The New Punks” and “Ziners”. The program will also include a bonus film, “Hunting Lodge” as well as the 16mm film The Dreamer That Remains (1973) featuring a rare profile of legendary composer, musical inventor and hobo Harry Partch. 

Date: Friday, May 20th, 2016 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 

Rod Serling: Beyond the Twilight Zone - Thur. May 19th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Rod Serling: Beyond the Twilight Zone, an evening of 16mm films from the archive all featuring that shiver-inducing host: Rod Serling. While best remembered for his TV terrors, Serling also lent his inimitable voice to documentaries, PSAs and educational films, all of which we will be sampling. The night will include a devilish episode of The Twilight Zone: Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (1963), starring Julie Newmar as Miss Devlin who offers the man who has everything a chance to start all over again. Serling narrates the haunting and ponderous In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973, excerpt), a documentary that seeks to examine the link between aliens and the ancient world; giving responsibility to the star children for everything from the Mayan calendar to the Pyramids in Egypt. Serling helps navigate the social faux pas of the workplace in the bitchy educational short What Do We Look Like to Others? (1972). In The Alcoholism Film (1974), he offers a sobering checklist for the alcoholic as countless drunks offer their own horror stories. Plus, a rare sketch from The Garry Moore Show featuring a young Carol Burnett in an episode of The Twi-Night Zone: The Mosquito (1961), and an exciting episode of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau: Octopus, Octopus (1970) for the early birds. Get ready to travel through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, beyond the Twilight Zone!

Date: Thursday, May 19th 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Learn your Lesson from Aliens: An Extraterrestrial Shockucation - Fri. May 13th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson from Aliens: An Extraterrestrial Shockucation, the 38th 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 headed out of this world and out of our minds with one of the most bonkers and baffling installments yet with all the best/worst low-budget aliens you've never seen teaching you lessons in safety, grammar, peer pressure, and inappropriate touching. Meet Bub from the planet Bubbylonia - a woman in a fat suit and an arts and crafts project - that's on our planet to learn all about touch; the good, the bad, and the creepy in Bubbylonian Encounter (1983). Though not an alien herself Guardiana: Safety Woman was endowed her incredible powers by a ship of chipmunk-voiced aliens and we'll see the extraterrestrial results in one of the most ridiculous superhero trilogies you'll ever see.  Watch her close encounter, her transformation and then watch as Guardiana saves kids from drowning and falling of cliffs in In Danger Out of Doors (1974), she confiscates a gun and stops a house fire in Harm Hides at Home (1974), and she saves kids from pedestrian and bike fatalities in Peril Rides the Roads (1974). We've unearthed another frighteningly fuzzy chapter of the furry orange Saturnian blob: Adventures of Trogmoffy: Timmy and Margaret Meet the Creature (1971). Tag along with sequin-clad alien Aarak and his TV-headed robot sidekick as they crash land on Earth and try to classify fauna in Mission Third Planet: Creatures of the Land (1979). And our favorite double-headed puppet alien teens are back with a cautionary tale of heading to "the outer limits" with pills and sex in Deciso 3003 (1983). Plus, more intergalactic snippets and surprises, it's a stellar night to learn your lesson!

Date: Friday, May 13th 2016 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

Metamorphic Cinema: Meditations on Transformation - Thur. May 12th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Metamorphic Cinema: Meditations on Transformation, a multi-genred evening of 16mm short films and animation reflecting on mutations and transfigurations. From mesmerizing time-lapse nature films to jaw-dropping animation, evolutionary musings to early cinema magic - including several new dazzling films from the depths of the archive - it's a one of a kind program celebrating the beauty of change. Films include legendary outsider filmmaker Sid Laverents' homegrown nature film The Butterfly with Four Birthdays (1965) in which shedding the cocoon is likened to getting "out of a girdle with a belt on and your hands tied behind your back," Transformation (1901), a super-rarity from turn of the 20th-century France featuring Méliès-like special effects transforming a lady magician into an ever-changing butterfly among other things.  The brilliant animator Peter Foldes gives us two hallucinatory metamorphic shorts: Hunger (1974), a disturbing early computer animation criticizing over-consumption in a world struck with famine and the collage and cell-animation Go Faster (1971) commenting on man's reliance on the rat race. Evolution goes at hyperspeed in the one minute cartoon Ecomega (1972), and gets a jazz-grounded claymation treatment in Eliot Noyes' Oscar nominated Clay or The Origin of the Species (1964). Mysteries of Plant Life (1940s) offers us masterful time-lapse photography of plants and flowers as they grow and bloom with sublime Kodachrome color cinematography from the pioneering photo-innovator Arthur C. Pillsbury. James Gore's Sixshortfilms (1973) is a stream of consciousness animation of faces warping into demons and birds transforming into telephones to strange and surreal effect. Bert Haanstra's Oscar-winning short Glass (1958) displays the hypnotizing art of glass-blowing with a soundtrack by the Pim Jacobs Quartet. Plus Bill Plympton's Your Face (1987) and a metamorphic pre-show from the Moody Institute of Science.

Date: Thursday, May 12th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Totally Strange 80's - Sex, Spandex, and Roller Skates - Fri. May 6th - 8PM

Oddball Films brings you Totally Strange 80's - Sex, Spandex, and Roller Skates. This bizarre and over-the-top evening features the oddest shorts of the 1980s, a decade known for its over-indulgence, bright colors, big hair, spandex and roller skates...roller skates! Get rappin' about fast food and vegetables in the gut-busting craptacular Fast Food: What's in it for You? (1988). Kids get creepy with grandma and her walkie-talkie-controlled robot when their picture book points out their body parts in Bellybuttons Are Navels (1985). Tag along with a couple of spandex-clad Calendar Control Officers in Calendar: How to Use It (1982). Step into a dream world of silver hair and a chorus line of dancing CPU units in the laughable computer primer Learning About Computers (1984). And, of course, we'll all learn to Roller Skate Safely (1981) with our matching neon spandex. Plus, Bill Plympton's surreal cartoon Your Face (1987), the itchy-kitschy Lice are not Nice (1985), a wacky animated Lego Sports Short (1986), and a whole decade's worth of great trailers, commercials and more snippets and surprises, with everything screened on 16mm. So, tease your bangs, grab your skates and roll on down to Oddball!

Date: Friday, May 6th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

All That Jazz: Jazz Cartoons and Shorts - Thur. May 5th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents All That Jazz: Jazz Cartoons and Shorts, a 16mm cinematic screening swinging with a heady and hip sound called Jazz.  The evening features antique musical shorts with tons of jazz greats like Maurice Rocco, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway and Ivie Anderson as well as a handful of animated films that feature jazz soundtracks and influence. We kick off our set with a classic of jazz cinema, Jammin' the Blues (1944), which features the coolest of cats, Lester Young, sitting in a relaxed slouch with his sax slung to his side as he wails a languorous line; a cigarette smolders, pinched between two fingers as he plays, but against the black background it looks as though his horn is smoking and you can see the tones floating up from it. The great Cab Calloway teams up with the Fleischer Brothers and Betty Boop for a double dose of rotoscoped cartoons: Old Man of the Mountain (1933) and Minnie the Moocher (1932) including the earliest footage of Calloway ever. Duke Ellington and Ivie Anderson bring us A Bundle of Blues (1932).  The surreal and stunning Vitaphone short Yamekraw (1930) features an all-black cast and a soundtrack by James P. Johnston. Norman McLaren's Begone Dull Care (1949) with music by the Oscar Peterson Trio, features animation influenced by the music and painted directly onto film. Lenny Bruce then riffs on hipster speak in Ernest Pintoff’s animation, The Interview (1960).  Fats Waller provides a delightfully wacky musical break with the Soundie Your Feet's Too Big (1941). Husband and wife animators John and Faith Hubley team up with Benny Carter for two groundbreaking cartoons Urbanissimo (1966) and The Adventures of an * (1956). Boogie woogie wildman Maurice Rocco hits us twice with Beat Me Daddy (1943) and Red Hot Heat (Sizzling Rhythm with a Beat) from 1937 featuring the Cotton Club Dancers in tinted sepiatone! Jimmy Rushing and the Count Basie Orchestra beg you to Take Me Back Baby (1949). It's a one of a kind evening of music, animation and improvisation.

Date: Thursday, May 5th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp St. San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilms.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: https://oddballfilms.blogspot.com