Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age. The Roaring 20s get the Oddball treatment with a sleight of Jazz-Age gems and some timely adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best work. Robert Redford, the screen’s best known Gatsby, portrays the mysterious millionaire in an excerpt from 1974’s The Great Gatsby. Shelley Duvall and Bud Cort ( Harold and Maude) star in the saucy adaptation of Fitzgerald's Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976), a timeless tale of female treachery set at the dawn of the Flapper era. The legendary Bessie Smith is… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 63: Weirdest Animated Hits! oddities from the Oddball Archives featuring new finds, buried junk, weird smut and miscellaneous moving image mayhem. Tonight’s program is a surreal sampling of the weirdest, most entertaining, and offbeat animated “hits” from the broad range of Strange Sinema programs. Films include: The Interview(1960), the brilliant Ernest Pintoff beatnik rant, Help My Snowman is Burning Down (1964), Carson Davidson’s surreal short about a man living on a boat dock with only bathroom furnishings (With music by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet);… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson Girls - Shockucational Shorts for the Ladies, the second in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection. This second helping is all about the girls; from predators to puberty, hitchhiking to hairstyling and a lot of uncomfortable and hilarious places in between! Learn how to be a popular young lady and not a cheap slut in the antiquated etiquette primer Are You Popular? (1947). Girls Beware (1961) teaches us you don't need Dateline to catch a… Read more
CROSSROADS is San Francisco Cinematheque’s annual film festival, a celebration of recent and rediscovered avant-garde film/video work. CROSSROADS 2013, curated by Cinematheque Artistic Director Steve Polta, will take place April 5–7, at the Victoria Theatre (2961 16th Street, SF). This year’s festal will feature a total of 51 films, videos and performance works by 48 filmmakers from around the world screened over 8 feature-length programs. April 5–7 at San Francisco's Victoria Theatre 2961 16th Street (at Mission) festival sponsored by Ninkasi Brewing, Cole Hardware and Puffin West. thanks to… Read more
Oddball Films presents Revolutionary Queer Cinema, a program of vintage 16mm films that revolutionized the LGBT movement and cinema itself. Films include the powerful documentary Pink Triangles (1981), a fascinating look at the roots of homophobia, and the oppression of "the other" throughout history; Scorpio Rising (1964), Kenneth Anger's experimental masterpiece of homoeroticism, bikers and rock n' roll; Un Chant D'Amour(1950) Jean Genet's lyrical portrait of homoeroticism between two prisoners; Behind Every Good Man (1966), an understated portrait of an African American drag queen in Los… Read more
Oddball Films presents Urban Blight: Stress and the City, a program of vintage cartoons, short films, documentaries and propaganda about the rise of the American city and the environmental, social, and political ramifications thereafter. The animated Boomsville (1960s) chronicles the pillaging of native lands to build a metropolis. Eli Wallach stars as a New York City postman who's so fed up with the impersonal bureaucratic city, he hatches a devilish revenge plot in The Dehumanizing City... and Hymie Schultz (1967). Pollution (1969) features a hilariously disturbing montage set to Tom Lehrer… Read more
Oddball Films presents Antique Animal Antics! , a program of vintage films full of adorable, hilarious and anthropomorphic animals. Decades before youtube, CGI, and the Buddies franchise, these furry film stars were doing tricks, solving crimes, talking, singing and drinking too much! The evening's beastly brigade includes the knee-slapping anti-drug scare film The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much (1987). Monkey spy, monkey do with Lancelot Link Secret Chimp (1971), the crime-fighting slapstick simian. Jerry Fairbanks brings us singing bears in Your Pet Problem (1944) and a conga line of dogs… Read more
Oddball Films and guest Curator Landon Bates bring you Visions of Verses: Poetry in the Dark, a screening intended to initiate National Poetry Month the Oddball way, with a batch of films, both brainy and bizarre, celebrating the baddest of bards, those conjurers of the subconscious whose wizardry with words stirs up a little something in the darker reaches of the psyche or soul. The films in this program alternate between those about poets (and their often-turbulent processes) and those adapted from particular pieces. We’ll begin in the very veins where verses first course--that is, in the… Read more
Oddball Films presents Creepy Cartoons - The Dark Side of Animation, a program of strange, dark, and unsettling animation from around the world. Cartoons are generally thought of as light entertainment for children, but the medium allows the viewer to explore dark and surreal worlds and subject matter at a two-dimensional distance. The devilish delights of this program include a pencil-drawn version of a 19th century British folk song Widdecombe Fair (1948) about an ill-fated trip to the fair on an old grey mare for Tom Pierce and a dozen of his closest friends. Comic strip Krazy Kat comes… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 62: Cinema Sequences + Nut House Nuggets , oddities from the Oddball Archives featuring new finds, buried junk, weird smut and miscellaneous moving image mayhem. This program features an oddball assortment of amazing cinema sequences, including feature parts, excerpts, trailers and “nut house nuggets" -weird spoofs and kooky cinema oddities all culled from the rarities in the Oddball Archives. Sequences include Federico Fellini’s infamous Steam Bath Sequence (1963) from 8 ½starring Marcello Mastroianni; Reel 2 of Radley Metzger’s stylish adult film… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter bring you Learn Your Lesson...Scott Baio, the first in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection. Round one of Learn Your Lesson features a triple dose of Afterschool Specials starring 80's teen heartthrob Scott Baio ( Happy Days, Charles in Charge). Watch little Scotty grow from a teen playing a young boy on the streets, to a young man playing a stoned and hilarious teen, to a full-grown man playing a High School kid with a drinking problem. We begin with Luke Was… Read more
Oddball Films brings you Wanderlust - The Romance of Transportation, an evening of vintage 16mm films about our need to travel and the planes, trains and automobiles (and boats and motorcycles) that make it possible. From jet-setting promotional films to safety scare films to charming historical animation, this program is sure to move you! Get jet-setting with the sizzling trailer for the 1969 sleaze classic The Stewardesses and motoring with the original trailer for Easy Rider, and then get ready to see the world, Pan Am's World (1966) with this stylish and beautiful promotional gem. Peter… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present Wake Up and Smell the Morning: The Ritual and Routine of Breakfast featuring the most important reels of the day. It's a smorgasbord of films centered around the morning meal and its importance in our daily grind. Michael Caine happily shares screen time with freshly ground coffee and attempts seduction via expert kitchen technique in two deluxe excepts from Sidney J. Furie’s The IPCRESS File (1965). In All’s Fair (1938), the Cabin Kids let loose on a pancake contest with lots of music and hint of mayhem. A craving for warm buttery treats… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Eames Legacy - Short Films by Charles and Ray Eames. A mong the finest designers of the 20th Century, t he husband and wife team are best known for their groundbreaking contributions to architecture, furniture design, industrial design and manufacturing, but t he Eames’ were also brilliant and inventive filmmakers, able to illustrate the most abstract concepts with readily understood images. The legacy of this husband and wife team includes more than 100 films produced between 1950 and 1982 that reflect the rich scope of their interests. This program includes Powers… Read more
Oddball Films presents Trance Cinema Live - An Evening of Ritual and Ecstatic States with live electronic accompaniment by Jakarta musician Iman Fattah. Oddball Films continues its series of ecstatic states and global rituals with a live cinesound presentation. Sherpa High Country (1977) documents the ecstatic three days of ritual in Nepal during the Mani Rimdu ceremonies celebrated each year by Buddhist Sherpas. In Ma’Bugi: Trance of the Toraja(1970s), women dance ecstatically and men climb a ladder of knives in a trance ritual that functions to restore the balance of well-being to an… Read more
Oddball Films and guest Curator Landon Bates bring you Signifying Nothing: Cinema of the Absurd, an exciting exploration of--you guessed it!--the absurdity inherent within the human condition. For a sort of philosophical primer we'll begin our inscrutable screening with that ambassador of angst, that emissary of alienation, that duke of despair, that prophet of pointlessness: that’s right, it’s Albert Camus in Albert Camus: A Self Portrait (1971) . This film gives a glimpse of Camus's French-Algerian beginnings, an overview of his most important works, and features rare interview footage with… Read more
Oddball Films presents More Oddball Oscar Obscurities, an evening showcasing the finest animated and live action shorts ever to be nominated for an Academy Award. With films from the 1940's through the 1970's, f rom tender coming of age portraits, to experimental animation to Pepe Le Pew, with a dash of dazzling Awards-show moments, this is one night the winner will be you! Films include ( and the Oscar went to...) The Golden Fish (1959) a charming film about a boy, his fish, his bird and a sneaky cat; Skater Dater (1965), the quintessential award-winning young love/sidewalk surfing film, (… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Christine Kwon present SNACK TIME! , with a live performance by Korean American musician Donghoon Han and indie stalwart Caleb Pate from Seventeen Evergreen. SNACK TIME! is the free-flowing combination of film, music, dance and, of course, ultimate snacks. I nspired by 50s-70s camp and absurdist media, SNACK TIME! showcases vintage commercials of our favorite childhood junk foods, alien encounters in rare B-movies, and psychedelic LSD-infused segments of the Be@tles Magical My$tery Tour (1967)— all the colors of the rainbow! Other highlights include 1970s… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 61: One Sexy Valentine , oddities from the Oddball Archives featuring new finds, buried junk, weird smut and miscellaneous moving image mayhem. In a sexy (and sexual!) toast to Valentine's Day,we’ve discovered some eye-popping and scintillating shorts. From the screwball sexual psychedelia of Ego (1970) by famed Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto to Octopussy, a double screen undersea sexcapade this program is sure to stimulate your senses. Films include the legendary sex and drug-laced short Minnie the Moocher (1932), starring Betty Boop and Cab Calloway;… Read more
Oddball Films brings you Stop-Motion Explosion II- Even More Explosive!, a program of mind-blowing stop-motion animation from every decade from the 1920s to the 1970’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.” Stop-motion provided the first opportunities to speculate on how the long extinct dinosaurs would look like in action, as seen in an excerpt from The Lost World (1925) . Pioneering puppet animator and Fantasy film legend, George Pal brings you the… Read more
