Schoolhouse Schlock! - Insane Educational Shorts from the Archive - Fri. Sep. 30th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Schoolhouse Schlock!, a ridiculous night of campy, trashy, antiquated, bizarre, and hilarious 16mm educational films from the archive. From the 1940s-1980s, with creepy puppets, evangelical batmobiles, children dancing like toasters, outdated science, and musical numbers galore, it's the best (and worst) educational film has to offer! School kids are forced to act out household appliances in a sad attempt at physical education in Perc! Pop! Sprinkle! (1969). Encyclopedia Britannica teaches you to wash your hair once a week and give yourself a good rubdown with a towel in Keeping Neat and Clean (1956). Science has come a long way since the 1940s, see just how far in two antiquated science shorts: Blind as a Bat (1955) from the evangelical Christian science organization The Moody Institute of Science and Magnetism (1947) as Dick and Jane explore magnets. A disgusting puppet named Trezlar tags along with an artist and learns all about rainbows, prisms, and Light (1980). Schoolhouse Rock brings us the much sampled musical favorite 3 Is The Magic Number (1973). Crash, Bang, Boom (1970), an early seventies oddity, proved that “school” plus “band” could add up to "far out". Learn about basic nutrition with a gaggle of creepy singing children in the campy classroom primer The Eating, Feel Good Movie (1974). More angry little monsters sing about their anger issues in another mini educational musical I'm Mad at Me (1974) from the Feelings series. Woody Allen and the Hot Dog gang weigh in on that age old question: How Do They Make Playing Cards? (1970). Plus, a strange trip to the school nurse: How Awful (1972) and more terrible surprises for the early arrivals. Everything screened on 16mm film from and in our massive stock footage archive.

Date: Friday, September 30th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
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

The 1940s and the Rise of the American Woman - Thur. Sep 29th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents The 1940s and the Rise of the American Woman, a riveting night of 16mm films from the 1940s featuring the flood of women out of the home and into the workplace, the cockpit, the wrestling ring, leading the band, getting behind the camera, and into the modern era. The collection kicks off with Woman Speaks (1940s), a rare and fascinating series profiling pioneering ladies of the 1940s. Katherine Hepburn heralds the rise of women in the workplace during WWII in the Eleanor Roosevelt penned Women in Defense (1941). Meet the women who worked in the wartime defense factories in an excerpt of The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980).  Sign up for the coast guard and free a man for combat in the propaganda recruitment film Coast Guard Spars (1942). Take to the skies with a pre-pubescent pilot, Deborah Gubbins in the Popular Person Oddity: Pigtail Pilot (1944). Two fierce fighting dames duke it out for the women's wrestling world championship in Lipstick and Dynamite (1948). Maya Deren - the grandmother of avant-garde film - forever altered the landscape of cinema; her breathtaking and pulsating piece: A Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) transforms representational performance art into abstract, non-narrative filmmaking through intersecting currents of subconscious, parallel realities. Watch out boys, the ladies bowling champ Tillie Taylor is tearing up the lanes, now would be a good time to fat-shame another woman trying to knock down a few pins in Splits, Spares and Strikes (1941). The ladies also took over the bandstand, evidenced by the endlessly entertaining Big Band Soundie Feed the Kitty (1942) featuring Rita Rio and her Maids of Melody and Ina Hutton's Girl Time (1947) showcasing dancing, singing, marimba player virtuosos and a standout performance from Nellie Lutcher. Plus, burlesque queen Sally Rand performs her legendary Bubble Dance (1942) and more surprises from our massive stock footage film archive.

 
Date: Thursday, September 29th, 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

The Menstrual Show: A Puberty Pajama Party - Fri. Sep. 23rd - 8PM

Oddball Films presents The Menstrual Show: A Puberty Pajama Party. It's a night of hilarious and uncomfortable 16mm menstrucational short films from the buttoned-up 1940s through the frank and awkward 1980s - handpicked from our massive stock footage archive. Linda's Film on Menstruation (1974) features two clueless teens trying to figure out about the monthly cycle through cartoons, sports announcers, and game shows.  Stay out of the water, choose your packet of sanitary napkins, and rub yourself with cold cream in the very British puberty primer Growing Girls (1951). Dance along with a large-headed and footless cartoon girl as she learns about the physical and mental aspects of her monthly visitor in Di$ney's notorious Story of Menstruation (1945). Learn all about your first period and making out with smiley-faced pillows with the most awkward pubescent heroine of the 80s in Dear Diary: A Film about Female Puberty (1981). Join Marlo Thomas and a slumber party of young girls gabbing about their changing bodies, lip-syncing terribly and other girlie stuff in The Body Human: The Facts for Girls (1980). Come early to see Canadian women talk openly aboot the taboo subject of menstrual pain in Cramps! (1982). Plus, a couple of secret surprises and more menstrutainment for the early birds. Come in full pajamas for $2.00 off admission!

Date: Friday, September 23rd, 2016 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 ($8.00 for those in pajamas), Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Car-Toons: High-Octane Animation - Thurs. Sept. 22nd - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Car-Toons: High-Octane Animation, an evening of 16mm animated shorts from the 50s and 60s - the golden age of car culture - with the need for speed. From road rage explosions to educational treasures, mid-century predictions for the future of cars, and stylish children's shorts, it's a night of animation in the fast lane. The little mole has the need for speed and soups up a toy convertible in the stunning Czech animation The Mole and the Car (1963). The National Film Board of Canada and Kaj Pindal bring us What on Earth? (1966) a martian's point of view of our auto-obsessed world. Insane Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto gives us Mr. Rossi Buys a Car (1966) a berserk cartoon in which bureaucracy and road rage lead one man on a bloody rampage throughout the city. Di$ney and dogman Goofy team up to help you be a better driver in two classic edutaining shorts - Motor Mania (1950) - Goofy turns into a road rage monster, and Freeway Phobia (1964) demonstrating how not to drive on a freeway. Another Di$ney classic Magic Highway USA (1958) predicts the future of cars and highways - from self-moulding roads to self-driving cars. British animation duo (and married couple) Halas and Batchelor predict a very different and dark future of a car culture in Automania 2000 (1963). Woody Woodpecker gets taken for a ride by Buzzy Buzzard-used car salesman in Hot Rod Huckster (1954).  Discover Miss Esta Maude's Secret (1966) in a super chic adaptation of the children's book about a mild-mannered school teacher with a hidden hot rod. Plus more high-speed cartoons for the early birds!

Date: Thursday, September 22nd, 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

Strange Sinema 104: Alternative Artscapes - Fri. Sep. 16th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly evening of old finds, rare gems and newly discovered films from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints-the largest archive in Northern California, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 104th program of offbeat, ethnographic, experimental, and unusual films. Strange Sinema 104: Alternative Artscapes is a compendium of films surveying sculptural landscapes from such artists like Robert Smithson’s own massive construction of a 1,500 foot coil in the Great Salt Lake Spiral Jetty (1970) to Hans Richter’s portrait of innovator of the mobile sculptor Alexander Calder as he plays and performs with his miniature hand-crafted kinetic circus in  Alexander Calder: From the Circus to the Moon (1963).  Winner of the Academy Award for best short film Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse (1987) is a colorful look at the life and work of  innovative artist Red Grooms, as he sketches people, and conducts a tour through the two-and three-dimensional walk-in works he calls 'Picto-Sculptoramas'. In a rarely screened film, Belgian documentarian Paul Haesaerts attains intimate access to Picasso's artistic process with the help of giant panes of glass in the eye-popping A Visit to Picasso (1949).  In the 1960s, technology melded with new media aesthetics - epitomized by the massive and shape shifting stand-alone sculptural sound machines of artist Len Lye in an excerpt from the dynamic documentary Art of the Sixties (1968). Plus! Two Oscar-winning and inspiring stop-motion animation shorts: Closed Mondays (1974), Will “California Raisins” Vinton’s breakthrough claymation tour de force of an old drunkard in an art gallery after hours, and The Sand Castle (1977), utilizing clay and sand brought to you by the National Film Board of Canada and director Co Hoedeman and winner of 22 international awards.

Date: Friday, September 16th, 2016 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating, RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilms.com
Web: www.oddballfilms.com

Cinema Soiree: Ends And Odds: Early and Rare Films by Paul Clipson - Thur. Sep 15th - 8PM

Oddball Films welcomes world renowned artist and filmmaker Paul Clipson for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. Clipson will be presenting a selection of rare and early works "displaying his unique vision to transform the everyday into phantasmagoric celluloid landscapes." San Francisco-based filmmaker Paul Clipson makes stunning Super 8mm and 16mm films often in collaboration with sound artists and musicians that attempt to suggest the excitement of experience, of taking a walk, going on a trip, freaking out, getting lost or being under the influence of things natural or unnatural, like cities, streams, dreams, neon signs, puddles and spiders, a world theatricalized by our attraction and dread of all things. Clipson's  work is based on collaboration, whether with sound artists, musicians, or actors. This evening's program focuses on early sound/music film collaborations made with the band Tarentel, as well a series of short comic experiments made with Adam Heavenrich, all titled Bucky, and finally touches on influences such as Buster Keaton and Maya Deren. Included are the following films, plus a few surprises!: BUCKY (1996-1998) Episodes 1-6, a curious figure navigates the world in an attempt to understand, BIG BLACK SQUARE (2004), an expressionistic view of fear within the spinning zoetrope of an industrial labyrinth, OVER WATER (2005-2006), the light and water of winter-time, viewed at 35,000 feet, over the U.S., somewhere between the East and West coasts, SUN PLACE (2007), a study of relationships between graphic visual forms of nature and the propulsive rhythms of music-making, ECHO PARK (2007), an abstract sci-fi dream of vegetation, narratives and wordless experiences, and WATERCOLOR NIGHT MONTAGE NO.7 (2007), this predominantly night-light filled study of movement and rhythm in neon, concludes at dawn entering the awakening industrial rail yards of Venice, Italy. Plus, two 16mm selections from the archive to round out the evening and foreground Clipson's work: Maya Deren's surreal masterpiece Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)and Lumiere’s First Picture Show (1895-1897), a compilation of the earliest films ever made by French cinema pioneers the Lumière Brothers as well as a vintage look at the Lumières' patented cinematograph, a combination camera, projector, and film printer.


Date: Thursday, September 15th, 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

Retro-Tech - Vintage Computer Shorts from the Archive - Fri. Sep. 9th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Retro-Tech - Vintage Computer Shorts from the Archive, a program of 16mm films from the 60s-80s about the rise of computer technology and the early predictions for an automated future. From William Shatner explaining microprocessors to killer-computers, the original computer dates, animation and more, take a look at the future of technology through the eyes of the past. Science Fiction's perennial Captain, William Shatner gets trippy with silica and microprocessors in the AT&T sponsored Microworld (1976). Presaging the current internet matchmaking trend, Comput-Her Baby is a wacky art film spoofing the notion of computer-assisted love in 1967. The Oddball favorite Signal Syntax (1980) will have you watching out for your personal computer, because it might be trying to kill you. It's not Monty Python, but John Cleese attempts to answer that burning early-80s question: What is a Word Processor? (1982). View early computer-generated animation and imagery in Bruce and Katharine Cornwell's Dragonfold and Other Ways to Fill Space (1979), John Wilson's Both Sides Now (1972) the first computer generated music short featuring the musical stylings of Joni Mitchell, the parasitological applications of computer graphics in Shapes of Nature: Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus (1981), and even more! Everything screened on 16mm film from our massive stock footage collection.

Date: Friday, September 9th, 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

The Trip Back: The Original San Francisco Psychedelic Freakout - Thurs. Sep. 8th - 8PM


Oddball Films presents The Trip Back: The Original San Francisco Psychedelic Freakout, an evening of 16mm short films shot in San Francisco in the late 1960s drenched in hippies and hallucinogens. This one of a kind program of rare experimental documents of the Summer of Love and beyond includes appearances by Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jefferson Airplane, Diggers, banana skin smokers and more! The homegrown hallucinations include Be-In (1967) artistically documenting the human be-in in Golden Gate Park with Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in attendance and the groovy, acid-soaked S.F. Trips Festival: An Opening (1967) featuring stroboscopic visuals and wild electric light shows. Sit in on the steps of our own city hall with the anarchistic Diggers in Nowsreal (1968), then watch them smoke up, freak out and deliver free breakfast to poverty-stricken San Franciscans. Decades before Burning Man, artist Fredric Hobbs created his grotesque sculptural art car The Trojan Horse (1967); watch as he constructs the automotive monster and drives it around the city. Plus, an experimental home movie of Jefferson Airplane in Golden Gate Park (1969) and get mellow yellow with the Banana Skin Freaks (1960s). Plus, local animator Vince Collins' mind-blowing metamorphic surrealist short Fantasy (1976). It's a night of San Francisco's most hallucinatory history - thousands of tabs of acid in the making! Everything screened on 16mm film from our stock footage archive.
Date: Thursday, September 8th, 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


Better Living Through Di$ney - Educational Shorts from the Magic Kingdom - Fri. Sep. 2nd - 8PM

Oddball Films brings you Better Living Through Di$ney - Educational Shorts from the Magic Kingdom. While obviously more well known for their animated features, Di$ney (as Walt Di$ney Educational Media) has been making educational primers since the 1940s with audacious subject matter like menstruation, venereal diseases, war propaganda, drug abuse and more. This program features high/lowlights of Di$ney's educational side with shocking shorts, some animated, some live-action and all Di$ney. In the notorious pseudo-science film White Wilderness: Lemmings (1958), Di$ney filmmakers manufactured a "documentary" about lemming behavior that not only cost dozens of rodents their lives, it changed public perception about the little furballs forever. A goofy cowboy gets pressured into smoking at The Smokey Mountain Dude Ranch in Smoking: The Choice is Yours (1981). In VD Attack Plan (1973), a cartoon syphilitic sergeant directs his VD troops into battle against ignorant humans. Benny's a teen that's got it all, but he might lose it if he trades his friends for steroids in Benny and the 'Roids (1988). Learn all about growing up, from an animated embryonic cycle to adolescent pimples in the zippy musical short Steps Towards Maturity and Growth (1968). From the same series, we learn about The Social Side of Health (1969), including an animated drug trip and more zippy songs, and Physical Fitness and Good Health (1969). Di$ney also got into the war effort with several propaganda cartoons including Don@ld Duck's surreal Nazi nightmare Der Fuehrer's Face (1943) and The Grain That Built a Hemisphere (1943) touting the nearly magic properties of corn. Two dopey guys try to explain computers to a clueless teacher in the dated cheesefest Computers: The Truth of the Matter (1983). Plus, you can learn How to Catch a Cold (1951)! With even more surprises in store, you'll never think of Di$ney the same way again!

Date: Friday, September 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