Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present The Visionary Animation of John and Faith Hubley , an animated program of films by the first family of animated experimentation as part of our Masters of Animation series. In the 1940s (up to 1951), John Hubley worked as a director and animator at UPA, defining their mid-century style of minimal and stylized backdrops, a style that would take over the animation industry for decades to come. John was blacklisted from the studio system in the age of McCarthyism and so he and his wife struck out on their own, working out of their kitchen,… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson on Prom, Parties and Peer Pressure - A Social Shockucation , the 26th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, we're going to party and you are cordially invited to this cinematic shindig of social guidance primers centered on social gatherings. 1940s glamour and goofiness comes alive in gorgeous Technicolor when four teens are on their way to Junior Prom (1946) and must discover to take off… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Body Beautiful, an eclectic mix of 16mm shorts that explore the human body from sensuality to athleticism, movement and dance and the transformative power of film to alter these all too familiar images into something transcendent and sublime. The evening will begin with a fun exploration of those who dare to bare it all with Nudism: a Way of Life (c. 1950). Experimental genius Ed Emshwiller meditates on the human condition in his monumental work Relativity (1966); from which we will be watching a mesmerizing sequence about corporeality and sexuality. Canadian… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Christina Yglesias invite you escape your present time, place, and dimension with Travels, Trips, and Journeys: A Night of Vintage Voyages . We'll venture to an underwater circus full of vintage vixens, experience the opulence of the golden age of American air travel, see what a modern art museum looks like through the eyes of belligerent claymation drunk, root for a tiny wiener dog on the run, go on a musical midcentury greyhound trip, heed the dangers of an LSD trip gone wrong, and more! Venture to the era where stewardesses, not suitcases, were weighed… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 87: Sex and Youth in the Atomic Age, a once monthly evening of newly discovered and avant-garde rarities from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 87th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This program features a rare black and white peek at the repressed and uptight 1950s-from A-Bomb scare films to social guidance films featuring unintentionally hilarious morality lessons on topics such as dating, family life, courtesy, citizenship,… Read more
Oddball Films brings you Totally Strange 80's - Sex, Drugs and Roller Skates. This bizarre and over-the-top evening features the oddest shorts of the 1980s, a decade known for its over-indulgence, bright colors, big hair and roller skates...roller skates! Kids get c reepy with grandma and her walkie-talkie-controlled robot when their picture book points out their body parts in Bellybuttons Are Navels (1985). Get the first turkey perspective of your Thanksgiving feast in the bizarre and macabre animation I Was A Thanksgiving Turkey (1986). Will "California Raisins" Vinton turns clay into pre-… Read more
Oddball Films presents Ad Nauseam - Vintage Commercial Extravaganza an evening of rare commercials and Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) from the “golden age” of television culled from the massive collection in the Oddball Films archive. Spanning the late 1950’s to the early 1980’s, these weird, wild, wacky, funny, frightening and fabulous 30 second slices of vintage TV were designed to entice, dupe or otherwise coerce the American Consumer in the most entertaining fashion. From toy commercials for the original Slinky to Buster Keaton plugging Ford Vans, plus clothes, cigarettes, long… Read more
learn how to react when our red enemies drop the big one on your town in the howlingly funny Pattern for Survival (1950), whatever you do, don't look at the light! The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much (Color, 1987) Wacky anti-drug film about alcohol and drug using Pat the Cat. He hits the skids before finally reaching out for help. An all-time Oddball Films audience favorite! Narrated by Julie Harris and winner of 24 major awards! Self-Defense for Girls (Color, 1969) A screamingly funny, over-the top training film for teen girls. We begin with some terrifying situations for our young heroines… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes filmmaker and archivist John Cannizzaro to our Cinema Soiree , a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. John Cannizzaro is a filmmaker whose works rotate between stop-motion animation and experimental films - often with an ethnographic element to them. As an archivist, his large collection of 16mm film prints center mainly around those very topics; ethnography, experimental works and stop motion animation. Cannizzaro will be visiting from Los Angeles and bringing you an eclectic batch of rare… Read more
The short documentary Beauty Knows No Pain (1971) follows the grueling Kilgore College Rangerettes audition process in Texas. Attention: Women at Work (Color, 1983) Women have to work hard in the bedroom and the workplace. This film surveys attitudes toward women in the workplace and presents portraits on women who do jobs men usually do. Lady Construction workers, architects and coast guards all invite us into the strange and wonderful world they occupy doing man’s work. Though we’ve come a long way in today’s workplace, these portraits remind us how we construct our own gender identities… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Kids are Not Alright, a night of 16mm rarities and oddities about troubled, twisted and tormented youth from the 1930s through the 1980s, featuring naughty little girls, juvenile delinquents, creepy ventriloquists, murderous moppets, and even Shirley Temple as a toddler prostitute. Find out all about mid-century juvenile delinquency in Teenagers on Trial (1955). A sneaky little girl steals her ballet costume and her "horrible little beast" of a brother destroys it in Amelia and the Angel (1957), an early short from one of Britain's most audacious directors, Ken… Read more
Amelia and the Angel (B+W, 1957, Ken Russell) An utterly charming early short from one of Britain's most iconoclastic directors, the late great Ken Russell (Tommy, Women in Love, The Devils). The almost too adorable Amelia (played by Argentinian moppet Mercedes Quadros) is getting ready for her stage debut as an angel with her dance class. Against the teacher's advice, she steals her wings to take home to show her mother. But, as her brother is a "horrible little beast", he absconds with the wings and destroys them summarily. Amelia must run all over the city to find a new pair of wings… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...Oral Exam: Chew on the Shockucation, the 25th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, we're going to the dentist with a tasty mouthful of insane dental hygiene shorts. While you may think dental hygiene might be a dry subject; the puppets, clowns, claymation teeth, cartoon hippies, monkeys and psychedelic rabbits in this show should prove otherwise! Get ready for one swingin' party with The… Read more
Oddball Films presents Mysteries of the Unexplained, a program of 16mm films exploring those mysteries of the universe that have haunted and fascinated us for centuries including Stonehenge, telekinesis, The Loch Ness Monster, Easter Island and (of course) extraterrestrial life; some silly, some serious and all on 16mm film from the archive. Rod Serling narrates the haunting and ponderous In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973), a documentary that seeks to examine the link between aliens and the ancient world; giving responsibility to the star children for everything from the Mayan calendar to… Read more
Oddball Films presents What the F(ilm)?! 11: Mimes, Monkeys, Mr. Bill and More! an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This compendium of 16mm madness is too strange to be believed and too baffling to be forgotten. This time around, we've got mimes and stilt-walkers protesting nuclear war, chorus lines of CPUs and ladies in cardboard boxes, woodchucks in hula skirts, a 1970s musical spectacular with Isaac Hayes, the misadventures of Mr. Bill, animation from a 12 year-old and so much more! The artistic hippies of Vermont bring us a… Read more
Oddball Films presents Eastern European Animation, an evening of rare and masterful works of animation from Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia, USSR and Yugoslavia, all on 16mm from the archive . The films range in form and subject matter, from the melancholic to the celebratory but all possess an intricate artistry and many, a dark undercurrent of oppression. Films include Little Gray Neck (1948), the Soviet answer to a Disney film with a small duck who sticks up for his bunny comrade against a mean hungry fox. From Sofia Films in Bulgaria comes Caw! (1982), a quirky… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Christina Yglesias bring you How to do Everything: Absurd Instructional Films . If you've always wanted to know how to impress your friends with some advanced trampolining, you still struggle with how to use a calendar, you want to be pretty, or you just can't get your dog to do a back flip, this show is for you. Hailing from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's these wacky, funny, and absurd instructional short films will be sure to entertain and educate. Let the spandex-clad singers of the Calendar Control Center in Calendar: How to Use It (1982) help you make sure… Read more
Oddball Films presents Monumental Artscapes, a program of 16mm short documentaries celebrating those artists that dared to redefine artwork in the modern world by thinking and working on a grander scale. This imaginative evening includes the planning, construction and philosophy behind iconic earthworks, monumental sculpture and murals by Christo, Robert Smithson, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Claes Oldenburg and G. Augustine Lynas. In a mini-tribute to the recently departed Albert Maysles, we will be screening the Maysles brothers first collaboration with Hungarian-born pop-artist Christo as he… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 86: Experiments in Sex , a once monthly evening of newly discovered and avant-garde rarities from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints , Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 86th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This program features a wide array of experimental and avant-garde films juxtaposed with comedic animation, pop-trash commercials, and a taste of surreal Triple XXX smut. The program explores, spoofs, and explodes concepts of eroticism from the 1930s through the… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes intermedia artist Elise Baldwin to our Cinema Soiree , a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Elise Baldwin is an intermedia performer and sound artist whose live cinematic works center around themes of natural history, collective memory and relationships between technology and the natural world. Using custom software instruments, physical props and circuitry, she often combines and manipulates original and archival recordings. She will be presenting two recent audio-visual works: she will… Read more
