The Oddball OlympiXXX - 16mm Sports and Smut - Fri. Aug. 5th - 8PM

Oddball Films would like to welcome you to The Oddball OlympiXXX - 16mm Sports and Smut, a nutty night of antique bizarro sports newsreels, animated Lego Olympians, and sexy snippets from yesteryear.  There will be baby races, dolphin basketball, scantily clad archers, figure skating penguins, naked pogo jumping, rollerskating chimps, bald head contests, nudie cuties, lady judo fighters, skinny dipping swimmers, gondola-jousting, and more stupid sports people did before the internet! Czech cartoon hero Mr. Koumal invents fire for the opening torch ceremony, but another man steals his glory in Mr. Koumal Carries the Torch (1968). Dive into the sexist sports short Contest Jitters (1950s) with ladies judo-fighting, kayaking, axe-throwing, and being painted with mud and hung on a ling while the narrator says things like "Let's be honest men, what good is beauty to a girl unless there's a man around to appreciate it." World renowned archer Howard Hill shows off his high-flying precision with the help of some leggy cuties in short shorts in It's Done with Arrows (1947). It's time for the baby olympics with Babes in Sportland (1950s) featuring crawling races, golfing toddlers, babies with bows and arrows and more underage ridiculousness. Pete Smith produces and narrates a wacky compendium of the most insane contests of yesteryear including a diaper rally, pie eating contests, kitty shot put, and jousting on gondolas in Curious Contests (1950). Your favorite childhood building blocks become the stuff of champions in an unprecedented five pack of Lego Sports Shorts (1986) including the audience favorites Figure Skating and Gymnastics as well as the skiing bear of Downhill Skiing and more hilarious and imaginative interpretations of Soccer and Ice Hockey. View the beauty of the human form in Leni Reifenstahl's iconic Olympia Diving Sequence (1935). Then on the smutty side of things (to put the XXX in OlympiXXX) we've got a smorgasbord of vintage naughtiness including the pillow fight of the century The Furious Femmes of France (1950s), the skinny dipping bathing beauties of Skirts Ahoy (1940s), the speedy rendezvous of Dick Kortz's A Quickie (1969) and the overdue encore of the naked pogo jumpers of the vintage beefcake short Wheee! (1970s). With more scintillating and sporty surprises and everything screened on 16mm film from our massive archive, you'll never think of the Olympic Games the same again.


Date: Friday, August 5th, 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


Featuring:

Contest Jitters (B+W, 1950s)
"Any contest gains in excitement when there's a girl on the scene. Whether she's competition or inspiration"

A silly and sexist sports highlights newsreel. Watch ice boat racing, bald head competitions, fishing contests, dolphin basketball, roller skating chimps, coed axe-throwing and a rack of women painted with mud. And listen as the male narrator belittles female athletes and patronizes their efforts outside of a beauty contest, touting "Let's be honest men, what good is beauty to a girl unless there's a man around to appreciate it."


Curious Contests (B+W, 1950, Pete Smith)


A bizarro sports newsreel by the master of the comedy one reeler Pete Smith. This wacky sendoff to the stranger side of sports features a diapering race, pie eating contests, gondola-jousting, kitty shot put, sumo-wrestling, log-splitting races and marathon dancers, all with the ridiculous commentary of the inimitable "Smith named Pete".


It’s Done with Arrows (B+W, 1947)
Girls in short-shorts gear up for archery and do their best to shoot off some arrows. Helpful inter-titles explain the principles of archery while world-renowned archer Howard Hill shoots targets and showboats with some slick archery tricks. The girls pitch in by tossing targets for him. 


Babes in Sportland (B+W, 1950s)
They're at the starting gate. They're ready to race.  They're...Babies?!?  This wacky vintage newsreel "documents" a tiny tot olympics, replete with baby races, toddlers shooting arrows and more infant weirdness than you can shake a dirty diaper at!


Olympia Diving Sequence (B+W, 1936) 
Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia documents the Olympic games of 1936, using disorienting angles and slow motion in order to display athletic bodies in motion, detached from all purpose. Often it’s unclear where the bodies are in the context of their environment, which allows the film to focus on their pure, Adonis-like form. Riefenstahl’s film captured the body-centric culture cultivated by the rise of fascism, and made it into an aesthetic principle.

Five Lego Sports Shorts!

Figure Skating (Color, 1986, Lajos Szabo)
A hilarious find from Hungary and part of a series of olympic sports acted out by Legos.  The couple on the ice are at the top of their game as they disintegrate into separate blocks, rebuild in different costumes, let out a swarm of penguins and skate out legos hearts, but is it enough showmanship to win the gold?

Downhill Skiing (Color, 1986, Lajos Szabo)
Another Lego sports short!  It's time for the downhill skiing competition and one bear is determined to make the grade. These ridiculous shorts are in beautiful color and win the gold in comedy!

Gymnastics (Color, 1986, Lajos Szabo)

 It's time for the floor routine and while two of the gals have all the right moves, it's the robot on the floor that really wins the judges acclaim!  

Plus! Ice Hockey and Soccer!


Mr. Koumal Carries the Torch (Color, 1968, Gene Dietch)
Part of a series of Czech animations featuring the bulbous-nosed Mr. Koumal. Two separate short cartoons illustrating a variety of human accomplishments in parable form. First, Mr Koumal invents fire (”carries the torch”). He tries to protect his torch from a variety of natural and human hazards. Comedy ensues.  Mr. Koumal valiantly attempts to carry the torch to the finish line against many obstacles. The torch is snatched from his grasp at the last minute and another man claims the victory.

The Furious Femmes of France
 (B+W)
A sexy ladies pillow fight will have to suffice for the wrestling portion of these Olympic games. Watch these half-dressed beauties duke it out on a couch!

A Quickie (B+W, 1969, Dirk Kortz)
A couple meet for a quick sexual interlude, and when we say quick, we mean hyper-speed!

Skirts Ahoy (B+W, 1940s)
Bathing beauties abound in this vintage nudie cutie. Two women go to the countryside and take their clothes off. They enjoy the freedom and liberty of being naked in nature and swim in a pool of water formed by a creek. Another women joins them and they all swim naked. 

Wheee! 
(Color, 1970s) 
A great homoerotic beefcake short.   In this high-jumping oddity, a couple of everyday dudes are hanging out naked, throwing back some ice cold sodas before jumping on pogo sticks. 

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 250 shows at Oddball on everything from puberty primers to experimental animation.
About Oddball Films
Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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.