Oddball Films welcomes famed distributor Canyon Cinema Foundation to our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Showcased are a selection of rare films from its vast catalog of experimental and avant-garde works celebrating San Francisco - its makers, landscape, culture and weirdos. This program highlights works made in the Bay Area over a period of 30 years and offers glimpses of beloved artists (such as George Kuchar), subversive behaviour and transformed cityscapes. Presented on 16mm, this Soiree will include Nathaniel Dorsky’s 17 Reasons Why (1987) affording viewers a unique opportunity to check out the film’s namesake and historic San Francisco landmark sign up close in the Oddball archive (where the sign now resides). Also included are: a rare local presentation of Tomonari Nishikawa’s dual projection work Into the Mass (2007), Greta Snider’s irreverent documentary Hard Core Home Movie (1989), Alice Anne Parker Severson’s Introduction to Humanities (1972), Degrees of Limitation (1982) by Scott Stark, a disheveled rogue running loose through the area where now stands AT&T Park in Thad Povey’s The Story or AARGH-X: Wildman of Mystery (Episode 1) (1997), By the Sea (1982) by Toney Merritt, and more! First emerging in 1961 from Bruce Baillie’s backyard as a screening series, Canyon Cinema has been firmly rooted in the Bay Area for over 50 years and is an organization integral to San Francisco’s art and cultural heritage. Antonella Bonfanti, the director of the Canyon Cinema Foundation as well as the staff of Canyon will be here to introduce the films and discuss the role of Canyon in the film community.
Featuring:
Introduction to Humanities | Alice Anne Parker Severson | 1972 | 5 minutes B&W, sound
My first year Humanities class at the San Francisco Art Institute steps before the camera and introduces itself one by one.
Hard Core Home Movie | Greta Snider | 1989 | 5 minutes | B&W | sound
Additional photography: Bruce Stewart
HARD-CORE is a frank and irreverent documentary that asks the question, "what is hard-core?" Seedy, grainy, and fast-paced, this is a nostalgic look at an ephemeral moment in the history of a subculture: punk rock in San Francisco in the late eighties. Everyone from fucked-up teenagers to elderly Mexican tourists attempts to explain the allure and mystique of the scene. Filmed at SF's historical petting-zoo/theater/punk rock emporium The Farm.
Degrees of Limitation | Scott Stark | 1982 | 3 minutes | COLOR | SILENT
A single 100' roll shot with a hand-wound 16mm Bolex. For each shot the camera was wound one additional time, allowing me to make it a little bit farther up the hill. Will I reach the top before the film runs out? A study in self-imposed limitations.
In Marin County | Peter Hutton | 1970 | 10 minutes | COLOR | sound
Into the Mass | Tomonari Nishikawa | 2007 | 6 minutes | COLOR | SILENT - dual projection!
Attaching two super 8 cameras on my bicycle, one on each pedal, I captured the side views of streets, while riding the bike from the Headlands Center for the Arts to San Francisco. The ride joined in the the Critical Mass, an event by San Francisco bicyclists on the last Friday of each month. The dual projection image shows the new landscape of the city.
By the Sea | Toney W. Merritt | 1982 | 2.5 minutes | COLOR | SILENT
A film made from Merritt’s old studio apartment on Telegraph Hill. A portrait of sorts.
17 Reasons Why | Nathaniel Dorsky | 1987 | 19 minutes | COLOR | SILENT
17 REASONS WHY was photographed with a variety of semi-ancient regular 8 cameras and is
projected unslit as 16mm. These pocket-sized relics enabled me to walk around virtually "unseen," exploring and improvising with the immediacy of a more spontaneous medium. The four image format has built-in contrapuntal resonances, ironies, and beauty, and in each case gives us an unpretentious look at the film frame itself ... the simple and primordial delight of luminous Kodachrome and rich black and white chugging thru these timeworn gates.
Visit the Canyon Cinema Foundation website to find out more - www.canyoncinema.com