Dinky Hocker: A Special Evening With the ABC Afterschool Special - Thurs. Sept. 20 - 8PM

Oddball Films, with Lynn Cursaro, presents: Dinky Hocker: A Special Evening with the ABC Afterschool Special. Nothing satisfies the appetite for over-the-top adolescent angst like an Afterschool Special and Dinky Hocker (1979), really hits the spot. Meet pudgy Dinky Hocker, a bright high schooler with two insatiable hungers: mom’s attention and any sugary snack she can get her hands on! Dinky's mom keeps the home cookie jar stocked, but is much too preoccupied with counseling young drug addicts and saving rivers for any other maternal chores. After reinvention via dieting fails, Dinky schemes to give mom the shock of her life. Stellar performances by Wendie Jo Sperber (Bosom Buddies) as Dinky and iconic TV mom June Lockhart (Lassie, Lost in Space) are balanced with moments of ham-fisted teen drama. Living room rolfing, anyone? Preceding, Dinky: Middle-schoolers pitifully demonstrate the privations of a crowded world with very small portions in Too Many People (1975). When Woody Woodpecker stays put for the winter, hunger leads to tried and true animated brutality in Pantry Panic (1941), one of his first cartoon outings.  Also: A luscious buffet of Vintage Food Commercials will be served up,  à la Oddball, throughout the screening.  And . . . home-baked treats for all from the Kuritorial Kitchen (while supplies last!).

Date: Thursday, September 20th, 2012 at 8:00PM.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00, RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or programming@oddballfilm.com 

Strange Sinema 56 - Friday Sept. 21 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 56, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ collection of over 50,000 film prints. This evening features a series of short, confounding and plainly strange films ranging from unique animation to spellbinding science to silent slapstick.  Works include the brilliant Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett’s Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), a sardonic re-reading of 1950s consumerism, mass media and popular culture, Charlie Chaplin’s silent Laughing Gas (1914) where he pumps his patients with laughing gas, pulls out the wrong teeth and knocks them out with clubs, the Mouse Activated Candle Lighter (1973), a bizarre Rube Goldbergesque short demonstrating the principles of motion, Crystallization (1975), award-winning filmmaker Carroll Ballard’s cinematic science excursion into microcinematography and electronic music, another short by Arthur Lipsett- Free Fall (1964) featuring dazzling pixilation, in-camera superimpositions, percussive tribal music, syncopated rhythms and ironic juxtapositions, Rhinoceros (1965), Polish master Lenica utilizes cutouts creating an animated version of Ionesco’s play about conformity, Experimental (1974), famed director Robin Lehman’s brilliant montage of feats of flight produced with the Experimental Aircraft Association. Other films include the euphoric Dream Flowers (1930s) featuring opium poppy harvesting and smokers, an eye-opening verite view of Texas cheerleaders  Beauty Knows No Pain (1971) by famed American photographer Elliott Erwitt, and a rare film They Shall See (1972) by Los Angeles filmmaker Nicholas Frangakis with cinematographer Steve Craig in a theological orientation to the mystery and beauty of nature, without narration and produced by the Franciscan Communications Center.  These films will amaze, delight, confound and inspire, so be sure to come get your strange on!

Date: Friday, September 21, 2012 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Crime Watch! - Fri. Sept. 14 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Crime Watch!, a program chock-full of cops and their criminal counterparts.  Every film will be markedly different from every other, but all will work together to create a sort of panoramic noir.  We’ll begin with Parole (1956), a real live, harrowing parole hearing, shot across the bay at San Quentin, in which an anonymous felon fleshes out his perspective before a board of judges, attempting to have them understand what might drive a man to murder, in hope of being granted some leniency on his sentence.  We’ll then switch point of views, to that of the law enforcement officer, with Arrest (1970’s), a reenactment of an arrest, involving the pursuit of a blonde man suspected of robbery and murder, armed with a pistol and a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam.  Buster Keaton follows, stumbling into frame in his classic Cops (1922) short, wherein he singlehandedly and unwittingly stirs up a city’s entire police force, swiftly becoming public enemy no. 1.  Shoot, Don’t Shoot II (1973) is an unusual “educational” film that tests cadets-in-training on whether or not to deploy their firearms in given situations; though its aim may be to train, so, too, it very definitely entertains.  Cheating in Gambling (1949) gives us a privileged look at the hands of a master card manipulator, John Scarne, who, literally, wrote the book on card hustling.  And, finally, we’ll conclude with a characteristic bang! Flesh and Leather (1951), our only purely fictional narrative film of the night, is a sort of sum of all the elements featured in the preceding films, replete with cops, crooks, killings, and a fixed game; and, it’s set amid the fogbound alleys of our very own San Francisco.  Stay off the

 streets for the evening and opt instead to watch these arresting crime films at Oddball.  Plus! In addition to the films will be certain circular treats, in commemoration of National Cream-filled Donut Day!

Date: Friday, September 14th, 2012 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Ladyfest Bay Area Presents: One Good Turn - Thurs. Sept 13 - 8PM

Oddball Films welcomes Ladyfest Bay Area for a filmic celebration of strong powerful women throughout history in the program One Good Turn, curated by Christine Kwon.  Including the rare and chillingly beautiful piece St. Louis Blues (1929), Bessie Smith's only screen performance before her tragic death.  Examine the myth and reality of the dutiful housewife in the disparate pieces Andean Women (1974) and 1970’s Breakfast Commercials featuring Patricia Neal for Maxim coffee. And none is more iconic of a young girl’s imagination than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1981), a pedantic yet uncanny animated retelling of the children’s classic. The centerpiece of the night features a segment of Carl Dreyer’s acclaimed masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and rounds out with Union Maids
(1976), an inspiring and insightful exploration of the labor movement in the 1930s, told through the eyes of three women who bravely fought for equal rights during this period. Refined, ravishing, and rife with complexity, the ladies in this collection serve to dispel the myth of the magical woman and present something much more real — women who play, fight, and work, and look damn good doing it.   

Date: Thursday, September 13th, 2012 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

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

Buggin' Out with Live Insect Pre-Show - Thurs. Sept 6th - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter bring you Buggin’ Out, a night of vintage 16mm films crawling with all your favorite insect friends and foes.  From mesmerizing nature films to charming cartoons from around the world to kitschy educational primers, we take this night to celebrate all things buggy.  Watch the rare and delightful Ferda the Ant (1941), a Czech puppet-animation sporting the first wire-framed creatures on film.  Merrie Melodies brings us Bug Parade (1941), replete with countless sight gags about a bevy of cartoon bugs.  View the beauty and intricacies of the beehive while it’s projected 10 feet high in Bees: Backyard Science (1978) and marvel at the incredible metamorphosis of lepidotera in The Monarch Butterfly Story (1987).  The Japanese bring us the cutest dancing bug party ever, in the trippy stop-motion version of the Aesop’s Fable The Ant and the Grasshopper (1967). Marvel at the ferocity of tiny adversaries when termites square off against hungry ants in The Battle of the Centuries (1932). Get ready for the itchy-kitschy Lice are not Nice (1985), a hilarious classroom primer on that playground scourge, head-lice.  Meet the fly’s worst nightmare in Carnivorous Plants (1965).  With vintage insecticide commercials, creepy-crawly trailers, free gummi-worms and tons of other surprises including a special appearance by the  Bay Area's award winning Insect Discovery Lab, visit with Giant African millipedes, Australian walking sticks, giant thorny phasmids, and eastern lubber grasshoppers and a few mystery guests , this is one night that will leave you itching for more!

Date: Thursday, September 6th, 2012 at 8:00pm.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117.

I Want You To Bite Me! - Fri. Sept. 7 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Emily Schleiner present I Want You To Bite Me!, an evening that examines and celebrates those glorious shape-shifting bloodsuckers, Vampires; both the lore and the fearful psychological fascination. Vampire lore, in one form or another, has existed in different cultures throughout the ages. From the Mesopotamian and Hebrew traditions, and even on to the monsters from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Laugh at and shiver from tales of vampires and their precursors!  Sink your fangs into delicious excerpts from the famous Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, a confection that introduced the legendary Count Dracula and his spider eating minion Renfield to the silver screen.  Delve into a psychadelic mishmash of otherwordly Tibetan demons from ancient scroll paintings in Tanka (1976), by David Lebrun.  Hide your femoral artery for Doom of Dracula, excerpted from House of Frankenstein (1927), a short film about a conscienceless professor-impersonator who brings Dracula to life!  On the lighter side, see hilariously spooky bits from Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), directed by Charles Barton, where the wacky duo encounter Dracula! A 1970s anti-smoking commercial takes the form of a melodramatic vampire scene called Ashes of Doom!  The rarely screened Teeth Are for Chewing (1971) gives incisive information about your incisors. Catch the 1970’s documentary about animal hunters, their canine teeth, and their killer instincts in Predators of North America (1981) as well as excerpts from the documentary Freud: The Hidden Nature of Man (1970) where you will learn about our human impulses that lie just beneath the surface!  And watch Felix the Cat hypnotize a hippo!   Whether you enjoy a good startle or some hilariously dated antagonists, there is something here for everyone, humans and bloodsuckers alike!

Date: Friday, September 7th, 2012 at 8:00pm.

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to: programming@oddballfilm.com or 415.558.8117.

The Hand: Peninsula Performances With A Live Synth-Score by Donghoon Han - Thurs. August 30 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Christine Kwon present The Hand: Peninsula Performances. With live accompaniment by Korean American musician Donghoon Han on the cine-stage, this program explores political and social powers that be, employing a diverse slate of films set against Han's unique fusion of nostalgic Korean pop and futuristic synth-based melodies. The program is bookended with sublime nature pics Earth: Man's Home (1970) and The Milky Way (1970s), which locate humankind in the larger phenomenon of creation. In between, Western-produced ethnographies of Korean and Chinese civilizations are revealed in The Korean People (1961) and Heart of the Dragon (1984). The centerpiece of the night features stunning puppet animation by Czech artist Jiri Trnka in The Hand (1966), a gripping allegory about a simple man, his beloved flower, and the dictatorial power that crushes his only joy. Filmic treats interspersed include a live action vision of hell in Dante's Inferno (1935), the disturbingly jolly claymation The Lost Sun (1968) and a moving portrait of mid-century world affairs in News Parade of the Year 1947.



Date: Thursday, August 30^th, 2012 at 8:00pm 
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco 
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Spread Eyes and Fly! - Fri. August 31 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Hila Abraham bring you Spread Eyes and Fly! Let the everyday unfold before you and reveal the transitory meanings and senses embedded in the shapes and colors of our worldly encounters! Come join us while we thread our way through the aisles of our prosaic existence to a more poetic one.  Use your eyes to fly and see from above a world of wonder... Embrace your inner bird with the sweet tale of The Icarus Wish (1972), and learn something you haven’t known about Birds and Their Characteristics (1961). Explore an Unseen World (1970) in the science-film written by science-fiction author Isaac Asimov. From microscopes to slow motion cameras, the film explores the question: What secrets lay beyond our present view of the unseen world?  No. 00173 (1969), a rare experimental Polish film, features one butterfly in its quest to catch your eye and arouse a touch of beauty at a Metropolis-like factory. Claude Lelouche’s short film Rendezvous (1976) presents a one-shot mesmerizing high-speed-drive through the streets of Paris. Keeping up with the speed, we’ll be moving on to Tom and Jerry: Is There a Doctor in the Mouse? (1964). Jerry discovers a secret potion that turns him into an ultra-fast mouse and Tom goes crazzzzy! Made in the renowned Béla Balázs studios and generally considered the starting point of a fresh visual style in Hungarian filmmaking, Elegy (1968) is a pure and captivating film-poem with a haunting soundtrack and startling beautiful images of wild horses, cracked pavements, circus magicians, naked trees, and more. We will close our night with some words of wisdom by Blind Gary Davis (1964), an inside look into the music and lifestyle of blues guitarist and reverend Gary Davis. 

Date: Friday, August 31st, 2012 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117