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!
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Featuring:
Linda's Film on Menstruation (Color, 1974)
"It means that blood is falling out of my uterus!"
Dear Diary, a film about female puberty (Color, 1981)
The Welcome to the Dollhouse of puberty primers! The exaggerated characterizations and embarrassing situations experienced by the film's incredibly awkward thirteen-year-old protagonist are humorously combined to provide answers to female adolescents' questions about their changing bodies. The young girl encounters peer pressure from her boy-crazy friends, changing sex roles, and a pillow with smiley face. Keep your eyes peeled for the animated menstruation cycle.
The Body Human - The Facts for Girls (Color, 1980)
"Being a girl is very special. I know... I remember"
TV's That Girl Marlo Thomas, the mastermind behind Free to be...You and Me, gabs with three young girls about the facts of life, their changing bodies and more awkward topics. With a jammin' slumber party, crowd surfing, chats about Billy Jean King's period, some terrible karaoke, and a soundtrack that includes The Bee-Gees, Donna Summer and the Righteous Brothers, The Facts for Girls really delivers!
Mary is 13 and going through a lot of changes in this very prim and proper British puberty short. Drawing on various farm animal analogies (so as not to step into any taboo subjects) we learn all about getting ready to have babies! Watch as Mary schedules her period, unwraps a delightful present of sanitary pads, and as she burns her soiled pads in the fireplace! The narrator has lots of great tips including not swimming, an obsession against "a chill" and even recommends spreading cold cream on her privates!
For the Early Birds:
Oh those Canadians with their open discussions of taboo topics! This ode to period pain begins with a parade of women throughout history (including Rosie the Riveter) discussing how they must never speak of their menstrual pain. Then, we visit a round-table of early-80s Canadian women talking aboot their experiences with cramps intercut with a delightful dramatization of one young woman's struggle with her uterus that gets in the way of her work life and her love life. When her beau thinks she's growing distant and is ready to call it quits, will she be able to admit to her personal problem, even if it is embarrassing?
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
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.
