Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present: Whack to School: Edu-tainment from the Sublime to the Ridiculous , all far beyond the 3Rs. While it's time to ship the youngsters off to be educated about the newest technologies, we here at Oddball are harkening back to a simpler time, when lessons were learned on 16mm and mimes were used to teach about bullying! These strange, hilarious and occasional musical shorts will make you nostalgic for the strange analog school days of yore. Did someone really think the crying mimes of People Different, But Alike (1975) were going to bring… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 67: Oddities From the Archives, an evening of offbeat discoveries and choice rarities from the stacks of Oddball Films’ 50,000 reel film archive. This month's installment - Strange Sinema: Dangerous Minds examines a darker, edgier time in American culture revealing systemic mental and social deterioration. Our program features Titicut Follies , Frederick Wiseman’s legendary 1967 banned documentary that exposed the sordid conditions inside the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. Wiseman’s camera watches impassively as prisoners are… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Psychedelicatessen: A Feast For Your Eyes, a super fun, crazy night of our very favorite vintage eye-poppers, mind-benders, jaw-droppers and head-scratchers. From hallucinatory dental hygiene to swingin' promotional films to surreal cartoons, this is one night your eyes will thank you for, if they don't fall out of your head! The madness includes Match Your Mood (1968), a mind-bending advertisement for psychedelic 60's refrigerator covers; Le Monde Du Schizophrene ( The World of the Schizophrenic, 1969) a super-surreal, Salvador Dali-like film… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Stop-Motion Explosion III, a program of mind-blowing stop-motion animation from the 1930s to the 1980’s. In a world saturated with CGI, Oddball Films opens the vaults to celebrate when historical, fantastical and anthropomorphic creatures were hand-sculpted and manipulated into “life.” Everybody's favorite little green shapeshifter gets into even more delightful trouble in a whole new batch of original 1957 Gumby Shorts. Oscar nominated Clay, Origin of the Species (1964) by Eliot Noyes Jr. offers Darwinian metamorphosis through modelled… Read more
Oddball Films presents Celluloid Sex, a night of vintage stag films, sexperimental shorts, social hygiene primers, bizarre burlesque, sexy trailers, commercials and so much more all from our eclectic archive of 16mm film. In the rare silent stag film On the Beach (1923 AKA Getting His Goat), sexy sirens lure a man to make love through a fence, only he gets more than he bargained for! Get ready for Eveready Hardon, the well-endowed star of the first pornographic cartoon Buried Treasure (1928) and his raunchy beachside exploits. Sex and experimental film blend beautifully in Scott Bartlett's… Read more
Oddball Films is proud to welcome filmmakers Dan Kinem and Levi Peretic in person for the San Francisco Premiere of Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector , a feature-length documentary that sheds light on the growing VHS culture and the community of collectors that still cherish what many refer to as a "dead format." It is a passion project made by true lovers of the format for not only people who love VHS, but also for people who can remember having to rewind a movie before they could watch it and for people who remember the glorious days of going to the video store… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Learn Your Lesson...Boys - Shockucational Shorts for the Guys, the sixth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection . This time it is all about the boys, from wet dreams, illiteracy, crying, making friends and dealing with bullying as just some of the hilarious lessons we'll learn...together! Kareem Abdul Jabar (with the help of Clarence Williams III and a little bleach in his brother's eyes) inspires one boy to admit his illiteracy in The Hero Who… Read more
Oddball Films Presents Oddball Beach Party: Surf, Sand and Cinema with a groovy, sexy, funny and tubular cinematic trip to the beach. Just because San Francisco's own beach is too foggy and cold to traverse, doesn't mean we can't vicariously catch some waves, admire bikini clad beauties or twist with Louis Prima! Louis, Keely Smith and Sam Butera and the Witnesses don their pedalpushers and set the South Shore of Tahoe on fire in the rare musical treat The Wildest (1958). Catch some big waves and groovy tunes in the psychedelic surf-fest Hang Ten (1970). Woody Woodpecker and Wally Walrus are… Read more
Oddball Films presents Polanski and the Polish Avant-Garde, a program of brilliant short films and animation from Cold-War era Poland. Dark, clever and with an ever-present undertone of veiled oppression, this program will open your eyes to the beauty and wit of this handpicked handful of Polish innovators. A young Roman Polanski (arguably the most famous filmmaker to come out of Poland) brings us Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), his darkly comic student film rife with absurdities and angst. The visionary artist Jan Lenica, (among Polanski's biggest influences) gives us a hip animated version… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator/Oddball archivist Scotty Slade present: Stand Your Ground, films that explore youthful identity in opposition to the old guard's rancorous ways in three steps. In Thank You Mask Man (1971) with Lenny Bruce, downright public contempt comes gushing out of the guts of those who are disgusted by what they cannot understand in this animated anti-homophobic film about a sexy affair between the Lone Ranger and Tonto. In a laughable attempt at trying to understand "the youth" of 1958, the National Association of Churches for Christ along with CBS paired up to make The… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 66 Oddities From the Archives, an evening of offbeat discoveries and choice rarities from the stacks of Oddball Films’ 50,000 reel film archive. This month's installment, Strange Sinema 66: Strange Synthesis/Media Manipulators is an examination of forward thinking artists and cultural theorists. The program features films by surrealists, avant-garde geniuses and media misfits from the 1920s through the 1960s. Films include the plotless, dadaist Anemic Cinema (1926) by the 1920s avant-garde icon Marcel Duchamp; excerpts from Andy Warhol (1967) with… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Inside the Cosmic Mind - Sci-Fi in July, seven 16mm films that squint past our planet and consider the cosmos. But peering so deeply into the celestial ether will inevitably make us turn the telescope on ourselves--a theme inspired and illustrated by our first film, Cosmic Zoom (1968), the classic NFB short in which the camera zooms ever outward, pausing on the edge of the universe--where our vast galaxy is but a speck among others—before diving back to Earth and into the “inner space” of a boy paddling a boat on a river, ending up inside… Read more
Oddball Films' Director Stephen Parr will be presenting a program on Retro Robot Films during the 3rd Annual Robot Film Festival. After two evocative summers in NYC, the Robot Film Festival (RFF) is entering its third year of bringing artful, witty, and cutting-edge films to film and tech lovers like you! RFF is a pioneer in investigating the human-machine relationship in front of the lens, particularly aiming to promote positive storytelling about robotics. Parr's program of Retro Robot Films, a tribute to robots, robotics and mechanized machines features films such as Elektro The Smoking… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Speed of Dark: Nightlife and Nightmares, a program of films that highlight the dark seduction of the nighttime. Whether awake or asleep, when the sun sets, the world becomes more exciting and menacing. Allegro Ma Troppo (1963) captures the life of Paris between 6PM and 6AM shot at two frames per second utilizing automatic cameras. Laurel and Hardy team up to burgle for the police in the Hal Roach comedy The Night Owls (1930). Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto's brilliant and mind-bending cartoon Ego (1970) unleashes one man's dark, psychedelic and erotic dreams from… Read more
Oddball Films presents More Amazing Animal Antics! , a second helping of vintage films full of adorable, hilarious and anthropomorphic cats, dogs, chimps, horses and more! Decades before youtube, CGI, and the Buddies franchise, these furry film stars were doing tricks, having affairs, talking, singing and going wild in a sorority house! The evening's beastly brigade includes the heartwarming and hair-raising Hungarian film The Incredible Cat Tale (1960), featuring one incredible cat that will stop at nothing to be reunited with her kittens . In the hilarious "Speaking of Animals" short, In A… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Learn Your Lesson...On Wheels - Shockucational Traffic School, the fifth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection . This time we're strapping on our skates, hopping on our bikes and riding the bus to safetyville with a few dozen crashes along the way! Monkeying around on your bicycle has never been more deadly than for the 10 chimp-masked children heading to a picnic but not following the rules of the road in the legendary One Got Fat (1963). In the… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present: Movies Making Movies: The Secrets of Cinema. Using cartoons, experimental film, trailers, making-of featurettes and more we’ll go behind the scenes to probe the life of movies and how movies have become a ubiquitous part of our lives. The history and tradespeople of tinseltown get their due in Let's Go to the Movies (1948). Film gets direct manipulation in meta-movie gem Kick Me (1975); just imagine the horror of being stuck in those teeny, tiny frames. The Looney Tunes Gang bites the hand that feeds it in when they spoof Hollywood in the… Read more
Oddball Films presents Oh Canada! Visionary Cinema from our Neighbors to the North, with a program of exquisite short documentaries, animation and experimental works, all from Canadians, eh! Clever, hypnotic, mind-blowing, and often politically progressive this program highlights the work of some of the best innovators Canadian cinema has to offer. The brilliant experimental animator and director of the National Film Board of Canada, Norman McLaren gives us two breathtaking works of pixilation animation. The first, Pas De Deux (1968), superimposes the minute movements of two glowing ballet… Read more
Oddball Films and curators Lynn Cursaro and Kat Shuchter bring you Classic Cartoon Cavalcade, an evening of some of our very favorite classic cartoons hand-picked from the San Francisco Media Archive's massive collection. From the kooky to the spooky, silly to the sexy with a little Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, Tex Avery, Fleischer Brothers, Walt Di$ney and imitators, just to name a few. Tex Avery brings us a sexy adaptation of an old fairy-tale in Red Hot Red Riding Hood (1943). Get down with Blame it on the Samba (1948) a mesmerizing Technicolor mix of live action and animation created by… Read more
Oddball Films presents Vintage Queer San Francisco, a program of ultra-rare documentaries and short films from the 1960s and 1970s. Get pride weekend started off right with this groovy and glamorous smattering of local queer nostalgia and whimsy. Naughty and thought-provoking, the investigative documentary Gay San Francisco (1969) gets down and dirty with the queer scene of the late 60's. Sinderella (1962), produced by local "Lorelei" is a fabulously kitschy, campy, draggy version of the classic fairy tale. See how San Francisco made itself up in the disco era with Flame! San Francisco Drag… Read more
