Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present What the F(ilm)?! 8: Animated Insanity from the Archive, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This month, we are going all animated with the most insane program of cartoons you will ever see with a unique blend of surreal, educational, propaganda and experimental cartoons too weird to be believed. One of our favorite animators, Bruno Bozzetto will knock you out of your seat with his surreal, sexy, funny and morbid brand of animation and we have three mind-blowing shorts: Opera (1973), Ego (1970) and Pickles (1973). Di$ney takes on the eradication of malaria in The Winged Scourge (1943) with help from the Seven Dwarves and STDs in VD:Attack Plan (1973). The medicine cabinet becomes a horrifying musical of singing pill bottles in Sniffy Escapes Poisoning (1967). Get the first turkey perspective of your Thanksgiving feast in the bizarre and macabre animation I Was A Thanksgiving Turkey (1986). The Oscar-winning Australian short Leisure (1976) mixes cell-animation and pop-art collage to make you think differently about the way you spend those off hours. Herbert Kosower manipulates engravings by Piero Fornasetti in the "film absurdity" The Face (1967). Adorable bunny rabbits resort to lepucide and face the strange legal system of hooded bunnies in The Punishment Fits the Crime (1972). Plus! Fantasy (1975), psychedelic animation from Vince Collins; Vera Linnecar wants hipsters to die in The Trendsetter (1970); the triumphant return of Caninabis (1979) and even more animated insanity!
Date: Friday, August 1st, 2014 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Featuring:
Three by Bruno Bozzetto!
Opera (Color, 1973)
The brilliant Bruno Bozzetto (Allegro Non Troppo) takes Opera to the most insane, surreal, political, and hilarious place you could ever imagine. Morbid and sexual with rips on fascism, sexism, racism and pollution, this over-the-top survey of opera features some of the most eye-popping imagery in animation history including the Statue of Liberty wearing a gas mask and Hitler with a new-wave hair cut! Safety glasses are recommended to keep your eyeballs in your skull!
Ego (Color, 1970)
One of the most phenomenal animated shorts of the collection, this surreal masterpiece starts with traditional comic-style animation until the factory-working family man goes to sleep and unleashes his subconscious thoughts sending him into a battleground of situations. His bizarre dreams lead him to Freudian juxtapositions of sex and gruesome fascism. Bozzetto utilizes a number of animation styles including optical printing and pop art imagery and a wild soundtrack by the ultra-lounge master Franco Godi to create the most unforgettable 9 minutes of cartoon history.
Another eye-popper from Bruno Bozzetto. In twelve animated vignettes, Bozzetto creates brilliant visual, satirical and comical treatments of some of man's great preoccupations: war, omnipotence, religion, democracy, advertising, drugs, television, hunger, "conquest" of nature.
Sniffy Escapes Poisoning (Color, 1967)
Absolutely twisted animation featuring a troll-like little boy with a massive head who drags his sick dog Sniffy to the medicine cabinet. Once opened, the pills and syrups begin to sing and dance as they cheerfully tell the little boy to KEEP HIS GRUBBY LITTLE PAWS OFF or risk a painful overdose and death.
VD Attack Plan (Technicolor, 1973)
“Yes, it’s true. Walt D*sney Productions has made a significant contribution to the war against VD. “VD Attack Plan” – A fully animated Walt D*sney 16mm motion picture.” states the brochure accompanying this 16mm educational film. VD Attack Plan had some forward thinking and enlightening approaches (not just for D*sney but everyone else producing this type of film in 1973) to the subject of sexually transmitted diseases including promotion of condoms (instead of abstinence) and the fact that VD can be spread through same sex couplings. This “war against disease “ film doesn’t miss a beat-even showcasing some of the graphic effects of the disease in action. In brilliant Technicolor, just like you’d want it to be.
Leisure (Color, 1976)
Oscar-winning, fast-paced, humorous and thought-provoking film using animation by Australian newspaper cartoonist Bruce Petty. Utilizing a pop-art sensibility, the film emphasizes the use of leisure time as an important aspect of life in our society today, tracing its history and possible future.
The Face (Dir. Herbert Kosower, Color, 1967)
Based on the original engravings of Piero Fornasetti. An animated bit of whimsy triggered by the premise that IDEAS lead to IDEAS. In what has been described as 'film absurdity' Kosower manipulates a woman's face into the bizarre and the beautiful. Kosower taught animation and film graphics at USC, where two of his students were George Lucas and John Milius.
The Trendsetter (Color, 1970)
Cool British animation from the great Vera Linnecar portrays a little man who is annoyed with the little trendies who ape and one up his every move. Illustrates how the trendsetters depend on others for their sense of self worth.
The Winged Scourge (Color, 1943)
WWII propaganda film from Disn*y aimed at controlling Malaria through mosquito eradication. Actually a movie within a movie as the Seven Dwarves are shown to be watching and spring in to action, including use of motor oil and the highly toxic Paris Green (replaced in the 1950s with the “safer” DDT).
Fantasy (Color, 1975, Vince Collins)
A hallucinatory handmade animated film from San Francisco animation legend Vince Collins evokes his particular brand of surrealist psychedelia. Mind-blowing!
Claude (Color, 1963)
Wonderful UPA-styled short by Dan McLaughlin, head of the UCLA Animation Workshop and recipient of the Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in animation. Little Claude is a clever boy, but his parents are clueless…
The Punishment Fits the Crime (Color, 1972)
Adorable bunny rabbits tackle the issue of racial inequality within the criminal justice system, in a fuzzy, light-hearted kind of way. With the outbreak of bunny-on-bunny violence, you will never think of bunnies in the same way again. With artwork by children’s illustrator, Steven Kellogg.
I Was a Thanksgiving Turkey (Color, 1984)
Jim Schanall’s wildly bizarre animated tale of a turkey’s gruesome fate. All the audio was recorded on Thanksgiving day 1984!
Ecomega (Color, 1972)
A 2 minute animated take on human evolution. Dark and humorous.
Caninabis - The Junky Dog (Color, 1979)
Yes, you read that right: CANINABIS! This head-scratcher from the National Film Board of Canada chronicles the animated exploits of a scruffy street dog, who develops a taste (and smell) for that sticky icky icky, but uses his powers to help the police, where he is rewarded with huge joints for every drug bust. But when the weed starts playing tricks on his mind, the scruffy mutt drops the ball and ends up on the street again, chasing tailpipes for one more high!
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 been scouring the archive for the best and worst of international animation for over 3 years.
About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our films 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.
