Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Girls! Girls! Girls!, a program of vintage short films all about (you guessed it) girls! From young girls to young ladies, from mean girls to tough girls, with newsreel oddities, mini-docs, mental hygiene primers, cartoons, trailers and musical numbers, we're highlighting the strangest, funniest and campiest girls of the collection. Marvel at the dedication and synchronicity of The Sofia Girls: Rhythmic Gymnastics in Sweden (1950s). Fashion meets the farm when a young lady leaves her home to be in a mobile modeling show in Rolling in Style (1954… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present Brooklyn: Cr adle of Culture. No, it’s not too strong a claim to make for a town that gav e both Mel Brooks and George Gershwin to the world. This treasure trove of rare cinematic delights from the 1920's-1980s features all of Brooklyn's homegrown heros. Carl Reiner and Brooks talk New York World’s Fair in The Two-Thousand Year Old Man (1964). She’s a big deal in Malibu now, but Barbra Streisand’s former neighbors recall a different girl in the colorful documentary I Remember Barbra (1981). Woody Allen is among the celebs unraveling… Read more
Oddball Films presents We Like Short Shorts! Vintage Trailers, Commercials, Soundies and More. It's a night of quick cuts and short snippets with a heap load of eccentric exploitation trailers, cigarette and beer commercials, Technicolor cartoons, and sensational soundies! Mandatory Edits (Color+B+W, c.1950-1965)This wacko reel of censored film clips will be presented as found. Marked “Mandatory Edits” and compiled presumably by the editor at the big Los Angeles TV station where this reel originated, these feature film clips were apparently deemed too violent, sexual, suggestive or shocking… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Charles Redon present Voulez-Vous Danser Avec Moi? an evening of exquisite vintage dance films hosted by Mathilde Froustey, principal dancer at the San Francisco Ballet. As the educational film Body Language (1974) reminds us, movements and gestures are our first means to communicate beyond words. On a collective level, dance is also a mirror for societies: in his film called Step Style (1980) Alan Lomax built a stunning ethnological study on how the different kinds of foot movements in traditional dances result from their socio-economical surrounding. In… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Louis Steven present Universal Rhythms: The Pulse of Time , a cinematic exploration where mechanized time is an additive practicality but ultimately just one of the rhythms along which we experience life. Through scientific and cultural research Of Time, Work and Leisure (1962) paints an amusingly dystopian picture of the pressures and speed on modern man ; meanwhile What Time is Your Body? (1973) shows a series of unsettling experiments where willing participants are isolated away from any external means of telling time while their daily cycles are… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Experiments in Animation, a dazzling, psychedelic and innovative night of groundbreaking animation from around the world. Not your average cartoon show, this varied program features direct animation, optical printing, pixilation, early computer graphics, and absurd and surreal cell animation from innovative masters like Norman McLaren, Jan Lenica, Vince Collins, John Whitney, John Hubley, Peter Foldes, Tex Avery and more. Shorts include Rhinoceros (1965), Jan Lenica's cut-out adaptation of Ionesco's absurdist masterpiece; 200 (1975) Vince Collins… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...On Dating - A Romantic Shockucation, the twelfth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, spend your Valentine's night learning all about the trials and tribulations of dating in yesteryear that still hold true (if not hilarious) today. Dating Do's and Don'ts (1949) will teach you how to pick the right girl for your teen carnival and how to have the squeaky-clean time of your teenaged life. And girls… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ collection of over 50,000 film prints. Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 73 th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This special Valentine's installment: Strange Sinema 73: You Got WHAT? , examines the subject of sexually transmitted diseases. This genre-bending program highlights the hilarity, the graphic medical exams and the kitschy cultural implications of these guilt-infused diseases. The films feature animation, educational,… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present What the F(ilm)?! 2: A Second Helping of Cine-insanity an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. From hallucinating clowns to drunk cats, Fellini spoofs to hair-lice primers and even more singing bear cine-insanity, this is one night of rare and hilarious head-scratchers you won't want to miss. The madness includes Oddball favorite The Cat Who Drank (and Used) Too Much (1987), featuring the misadventures of Pat the drunk cat; the hallucinatory dental hygiene brain-boiler Toothache of the… Read more
Oddball Films presents Visions of Dystopia, an evening of mind-bending short films that transport us into alternate realities; be it the bleak future, or a dark and dangerous fantasy realm. Based on a Ray Bradbury story and directed by the legendary Saul and Elaine Bass, Quest (1984) is one boy's jaw-dropping journey to save an entire race before he outlives his 8 day lifespan. West Coast experimental filmmaker Donald Fox’s exhilaratingly beautiful optical poem Omega (1970) deals with the end of mankind on earth through mind-bending visuals. Chris Marker's enduring sci-fi experiment La Jetee… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present The Weird Weird West - Chimps, Cartoons and Rock 'n' Roll, a program of some of the strangest, most inventive, psychedelic, hilarious, animated, musical and interesting takes on the Old West. From chimp cowboys to interpretive dancing ghosts, Marlene Dietrich to Lenny Bruce, this is one night that goes way beyond the genre of the Western while still revering its tropes. Jon Byner's Something Else (1970) was a short-lived TV musical spectacular and this all-star episode set in a ghost town features performances by Roberta Flack and Phil Ochs, as… Read more
Oddball Films presents Cinema Parisienne - Vintage Paris through the Filmmaker's Lens, a program of 16mm films from the 1920s-1970s highlighting the art, architecture and nightlife of Paris. While vacation season may be over, that doesn't mean we can't take a rare trip across the world and back in time to celebrate the romantic mystery of the Paris of yesteryear with short films in a wide-variety of genres and styles, but all singularly Parisian. Films include the Academy-Award winning silent comedy One-Eyed Men Are Kings (1974); Rendezvous (1976), Claude Lelouch's one-take mad-dash through… Read more
Oddball Films presents Cult of Personality - Charismatic Mini-Docs with an evening of short portrait documentaries about outlandish, endearing and out-there characters from a selection of notable and award-winning filmmakers. In I Remember Barbra (1980), Kevin Burns takes to the streets of Brooklyn for recollections of Barbra Streisand from the many colorful characters of her hometown. Tom Palazzolo captures the friendly frenzy of a lunch-rush at Jerry's Deli (1976) with its benevolently loud owner barking and snarking with his amused clientele. A lovably eccentric inventor in rural England… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present Glamour, Grit and Gams: The 1930s Make a Spectacle of Themselves. Hollywood glitz, newsreels and popular comedy give a mostly light-hearted view of a complex era. Warner Brothers’ much-loved musicals were a bold blend of workaday woes and the fevered vision of dance director Busby Berkeley. We'll feature two stunners: the bluesy My Forgotten Man from Gold Diggers of 1933 and the Surrealist mindboggler, I Only Have Eyes for You from 1934's Dames . A defiant Barbara Stanwyck clashes with rough, pre-stardom Clark Gable in a clip from notorious… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...About Being Different - Shockucational Acceptance, the eleventh in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection. This time, we're celebrating our differences with mime bullies, wheelchair musical numbers, homophobic jocks and even Michael Jackson singing about self-acceptance. Michael Keaton stars in A Different Approach (1978), an all-star musical comedy benefitting disabled workers' rights (with cameos by Two Golden Girls!). In the Captain… Read more
Picturesque Japan (Color, 1951) During World War II, works analyzing and deconstructing Japanese culture came into demand due to a perceived need to “know your enemy” by the American government. The U.S. occupied Japan from the end of the war until 1952, during which time such texts gained popularity with a mass audience, informing a popular understanding of Japan. Some foundational claims from such studies remain instilled in the rhetoric surrounding Japanese culture. Specifically, the claim that Japan is constructed around a series of contradictions remains prevalent; that Japan is at the… Read more
Oddball Films presents Tunes and Toons: Animated Adventures in Musicland, a night of charming, stunning and vibrant animation, all about the magical process of making music. Di$ney's Symposium on Popular Songs (1962) takes you through the first half of the 20th century of popular music through a mixture of cell-animation, stop-motion and paper cutouts, in gorgeous color (try not to lose your head when rutabagas start dancing!). The British musicians of the Hoffnung Palm Court Orchestra (1965) keep calm and carry on playing, even in the face of calamity. Ward Kimball's Academy Award-winning… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present What the F (ilm)?! an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. From puppet anger management to rockin' Grandpas, Bergman spoofs, junky dogs and more cine-insanity, this is one night of rare and hilarious head-scratchers you won't want to miss. Grandpa gets bored of the old-age home and signs his soul over to the devil to become a rockin' sex machine in The Old Man and the Devil (1970s). Caninibis: The Junky Dog (1979) is the story of one cartoon dog who loves to get high, even when he's… Read more
Oddball Films presents Film Capsule 1964 - Groundbreaking Cinema Half a Century Later with a selection of some of the most fascinating, award-winning, visionary and mind-blowing shorts from 50 years ago. This multi-genred program includes insightful documentaries, innovative animation and transformative avant-garde works, all made in 1964. The Academy Award competition for best animated short was incredibly stiff that year and we have included three offbeat nominated masterpieces, including Eliot Noyes Jr.'s Clay, Origin of the Species, a fun, metamorphic claymation take on Darwin's Theory of… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ collection of over 50,000 film prints. Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 16mm film prints Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 72 nd program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment Strange Sinema 72: Gypsies, Hoboes, Nomads and Vagabonds, a screening examining nomadic life around the world from gypsies in Eastern Europe to traveling traders of Tibet to the legendary hoboes and comedic vagabonds of North America. This genre-… Read more
