Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present A Brighter Yesterday: Science and Technology of the ‘20s and ‘30s . Using gorgeous educational and mesmerizing promotional films, plus cartoons and sci-fi; we look at the many faces progress between the wars, whether purely scientific or not. Sun Healing (1930s) , a jaw-dropping forerunner of the infomercial, pitches an ominous health device that's "safe" to use on your own children. Take a good look at opium with Dream Flowers (1930s) featuring beautiful, meditative microphotography of a cross-section of an opium poppy . Associated Oil… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 65: Oddities From the Archives, an evening of newly discovered and choice rarities from the stacks of Oddball Films’ 50,000 reel film archive. This installment of the strangest show in San Francisco - Strange Sinema 65: Strange Stuntsfeatures a horde of adrenaline junkies, High Wire Daredevils, Dust Eating Drivers, Human Boomerangs, and Strait-Jacket Escapes . The hair-raising feats include High Wire (1984), an early profile of high wire artist Philippe Petit (subject of the 2008 film Man On Wire) teetering between a skyscraper and the NYC Cathedral of St… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Learn Your Lesson...About Sex - Shockucational Contraceptives, the fourth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection . This time, it's all about sex and its potentially devastating aftermath. Teens talk about virginity, sex, and other taboo subjects in Romance, Sex and Marriage: All the Guys ever Want is S.E.X. (1976). Peter Sellers lends his voice to an animated father struggling to educate his child in the Birds, Bees and Storks (1965). Di$ney brings… Read more
Oddball Films presents Watch What You Eat, a program of witty and thought-provoking short films that will make you rethink your next meal. The program features the Oddball Premiere of a new short documentary The Trouble with Bread (2013) chronicling filmmaker Maggie Biedelman's quest to uncover the truth behind the new epidemic of gluten intolerance. The filmmaker will be here, in person to answer your burning bread questions. Then, our neighbors to the North try to uncover a mystery, the Mystery in the Kitchen (1958) with the housewife's guide to proper family nutrition and poison control in… Read more
Oddball Films presents Sid Davis: Nightmare Maker, an evening celebrating the career of the master of the educational shock film. Sid Davis films were famously funded by an initial $1000 donation by John Wayne. He went on to produce numerous classics of the educational scare film genre, priding himself by making each one for $1000- a miniscule amount even in its day. From drugs, to speeding, to child-molesters to impaling little girls with scissors, this program touches on all of Davis' favorite topics. We begin where he did, with The Dangerous Stranger (1950), about the threat of child… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Submerged Cinema, a screening teeming with celluloid cephalopods and European seamen. Among other wet wonders, we'll spy the likes of shimmering starfish and gnashing sharks, in films that range from nature docs to sci-fi shockers. Peering through our 16mm porthole, we'll begin our descent into the murky depths with that nephew of Neptune, that red-capped Renaissance man of the sea: Jacques Cousteau. In Sharks, an episode from The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1970), the captain and his Calypso crew provoke that ferocious fish--and… Read more
Oddball Films presents Man and the Machine - The Future of Technology from the Past, a program of vintage films about computers, robots and other omnipresent technological marvels. In Microworld (1976) an overly dramatic William Shatner explores the oddly psychedelic world of microprocessors. Ray Bradbury's The Veldt (1970s) features a nuclear family in a computerized home that leads to deadly results. Isaac Asimov and Walter Cronkite investigate The Weird World of Robots (1968). Go behind the scenes of turning Yul Brenner into a killer cyborg in The Westworld Production Short (1973).… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Formidable Conformity: The System Fights Back, a program of films about man's struggle against the status-quo. With vintage cartoons, industrial films, PSAs and avant-garde breathtakers, this is one night the "system" never saw coming. The laughable Plastics Council sponsored film, How To Infiltrate the Establishment (1960s), seeks to recruit young hip surfers and rockers to the plastics industry by making it look groovy to get a job. Michael Keaton attempts to change employers' minds about hiring the handicapped in a musical-comedy all-star… Read more
Oddball Films presents Play with your Toys! a fun, freewheeling program of vintage short films celebrating toys. Marvel at the childlike wonder instilled in artist Alexander Calder as he plays with his kinetic sculptures in Calder’s Circus (1963). Charles and Ray Eames were huge miniature and toy enthusiasts and offer up two visually stunning shorts, Tops (1969), a brilliant childlike anthropological film capturing spinning tops from different cultures and eras and Toccata For Toy Trains (1957) a marvelous celebration of antique toys. Grant Munro's Toys (1966) brings to life your GI Joes, but… Read more
Oddball Films presents You Give Me Fever - God, The Devil and Betty Boop, a hodge-podge of vintage shorts, documentaries, cartoons and burlesque numbers about the fervor of faith and the seduction of Satan. Films include local filmmaker Peter Adair's incredible documentary Holy Ghost People (1967), featuring the seemingly bizarre practices of a West Virginia Pentecostal congregation including speaking in tongues, ingestion of poison and use of snakes within their religious ceremonies. Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother ( 1969) is a satanic fueled vision in Technicolor with a… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present: Sugar Shock: Candy, Cavities and Saturday Morning Shenanigans, a batch of gooey ephemera sure to please sweet tooths and film fans alike. The exquisitely piped icing on a royal wedding cake is one mind-blowing work of Artistry in Sugar (1971), and the confectioner can even make edible dishes. Kids get into the act in At Your Fingertips: Sugar and Spice (1970), a guide to molding sparkling crystals into objets d'arts to treasure! Recently departed practical-special effects legend Ray Harryhausen whips up a yummy puppet version of Hansel and… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 64: Optical Explorations, an evening of newly discovered and choice rarities from the stacks of Oddball Films’ 50,000 reel film archive. This installment of Strange Sinema features an eclectic combination of films that illuminate the visual vanguard and optical experimentation. We begin with Rene Claire’s surrealist/dada masterpiece Entr’acte (1924) featuring avant-garde photographer Man Ray and Frances Picabia, followed by the rare documentary Art of the Sixties (1967), featuring the eye-popping soft sculptures of Claes Oldenberg, kinetic artist Len Lye… Read more
Oddball Films Presents Czech Please! an evening of mind-blowing animation from the former Czechoslovakia. From cut-outs to puppets to stop-motion; from the adorable to the dark and thought-provoking, this evening will open your eyes to the brilliance, vision and creativity of some of the great Czech animators. Films include Jiri Trnka's exquisite parable of totalitarianism, The Hand (1965). The two-cutest bird friends you may ever see dance to the radio, take pictures of themselves and fight off a hungry cat in the insanely adorable Queer Birds (1967). Recurring cartoon hero The Mole paints… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...on Drugs - Shockucational Shorts for the D.A.R.E. Generation, the third in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection. This time, we're taking drugs; that is taking on drugs and the filmic pharmacy is officially open! Melanie and Kathleen are desperate to experiment with drugs in excerpts from Degrassi Jr. High - The Experiment (1987). Creepy double-headed puppets designed by Julie Taymor teach us about intergalactic teens and peer… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Solo Cinema, a program of loners, drifters and on-screen dreamers with cast comprised of a band of outsiders. This collection of films celebrates the solitary, and salutes the secluded. The cinema, after all, is our sanctuary: the abode of the awkward, shelter for the shy. And, who better to state this theme than that perpetual wanderer, that lone wolf, the Tramp? In The Tramp (1915), Chaplin’s iconic hobo-hero saves a farm girl from a group of thieves, and, welcomed into her father’s house as a gesture of his gratitude, Charlie finds the… Read more
Oddball Films and Jewish curator Kat Shuchter bring you Jew Ought to be in Pictures: Choice Comedy Rarities from the Chosen People. This program of comedy masters features rare films with Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar, The Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, Jack Benny, Andy Kaufman, Tom Lehrer and more. All four Marx Brothers bring us ridiculous warfare that includes dozens of costume changes, parliament breaking into song and Harpo Revere in This is War? (1933, excerpts from Duck Soup). From Mel Brooks, we have his Oscar-winning animated short The Critic (1963) and a live… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Feminine Aesthetic, a program of vintage films by and about pioneering women artists and filmmakers; featuring groundbreaking animation, entertaining documentaries and breathtaking experimental works. We will begin the program with a trailer for The Seduction of Mimi(1972), Lina Wertmuller's breakthrough film (she went on to be the first woman nominated for a Best Director Oscar). Lotte Reineger made the very first animated feature and we celebrate her exquisite artistry with two of her most beautiful silhouette shorts, The Magic Horse(1953) and Galathea: Das… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Cine-Circus is Coming to Town! Step Right Up, Step Right Up to the Oddest Show in town; a program of vintage gems and oddities about The Big-Top. Behold Blonde Bombshell Mae West ride elephants and shoot at tigers in excerpts from I’m No Angel (1933). Witness the amazing feats of the underwater Submarine Circus (1940s), complete with aquatic hot-dog stands . Bend your ears to crooner Rudy Vallee pining for Lydia the Tattooed Lady (1939). Marvel at the childlike wonder instilled in artist Alexander Calder as he plays with his kinetic sculptures in Calder’s Circus (… Read more
One night only, 8PM- 12AM, the group exhibition Night Light: Multimedia Garden Party blankets SOMArts in site-specific luminous art installations, live music and performances, and digital and cinematic projections by more than 50 artists. Night Light includes a film projection performance by Stephen Parr/Oddball Films titled Sonic Oddities a cinematic and auditory collision of film shorts, clips, fragments and reprocessed sounds set to live improvisational electronics by Jakarta musician Iman Fattah. Drawn from Parr’s company, Oddball Films’ 16mm film archive of 50,000 works, this cinematic… Read more
Oddball Films presents Selling the Dream: From Sex to Sedans, a program of vintage portrait documentaries and instructional films heralding the self-made man. Whether peddling smut, ice cream, fried chicken or used cars, this evening will truly show you the depth of the salesman. Films include The Most (1963) featuring the Pl@yboy Prince of salesmen- responsible for selling sex to America for over half a century- Hugh Hefne® in the height of his reign; The Man Who Made Millions Think (c. 1950) , a rare long-form commercial gem from the 1950s featuring Lee Harris, king of hair products, giving… Read more
