Oddball Films and NDDivis present Bikes on Film: Benefit for NDDivi s, a free-wheeling evening of vintage bicycle films to benefit saving the historic Harding Theater. Neighbors Developing Divisidero is a non-profit organization that is currently fighting to save the Harding Theater from being demolished and condo-ified. To help in their efforts to save our collective cinematic and community history, Oddball opens it’s doors and screen to bring you a fun evening full of films about bike safety, maintenance, history and more. See the legendary One Got Fat (1963) with children dressed as… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Soumyaa Kapil Behrens bring you A Hard Road to Easy Street , an evening of films on adventures, real and imagined, that reveal it’s not so easy to be living the good life in today’s world. The program explores the journey of personal and creative place-making through the lens of groundbreaking queer cinema, vintage animations, satire and hard hitting documentary film. The highlights of the program include Lloyd Reckord’s 1965 short, Dream A40 , one of the first queer films of its kind, a film that goes on the road with two men and their feelings, the bold and… Read more
Oddball Films, with Lynn Cursaro, presents: Dinky Hocker: A Special Evening with the ABC Afterschool Special. Nothing satisfies the appetite for over-the-top adolescent angst like an Afterschool Special and Dinky Hocker (1979) , really hits the spot. Meet pudgy Dinky Hocker, a bright high schooler with two insatiable hungers: mom’s attention and any sugary snack she can get her hands on! Dinky's mom keeps the home cookie jar stocked, but is much too preoccupied with counseling young drug addicts and saving rivers for any other maternal chores. After reinvention via dieting fails, Dinky… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 56, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ collection of over 50,000 film prints. This evening features a series of short, confounding and plainly strange films ranging from unique animation to spellbinding science to silent slapstick. Works include the brilliant Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett’s Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), a sardonic re-reading of 1950s consumerism, mass media and popular culture, Charlie Chaplin’s silent Laughing Gas (1914) where he pumps his patients with laughing gas, pulls out the wrong… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Crime Watch! , a program chock-full of cops and their criminal counterparts. Every film will be markedly different from every other, but all will work together to create a sort of panoramic noir. We’ll begin with Parole (1956) , a real live, harrowing parole hearing, shot across the bay at San Quentin, in which an anonymous felon fleshes out his perspective before a board of judges, attempting to have them understand what might drive a man to murder, in hope of being granted some leniency on his sentence. We’ll then switch point of views… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes Ladyfest Bay Area for a filmic celebration of strong powerful women throughout history in the program One Good Turn, curated by Christine Kwon. Including the rare and chillingly beautiful piece St. Louis Blues(1929), Bessie Smith's only screen performance before her tragic death. Examine the myth and reality of the dutiful housewife in the disparate pieces Andean Women (1974) and 1970’s Breakfast Commercials featuring Patricia Neal for Maxim coffee. And none is more iconic of a young girl’s imagination than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1981), a pedantic yet uncanny… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter bring you Buggin’ Out , a night of vintage 16mm films crawling with all your favorite insect friends and foes. From mesmerizing nature films to charming cartoons from around the world to kitschy educational primers, we take this night to celebrate all things buggy. Watch the rare and delightful Ferda the Ant (1941), a Czech puppet-animation sporting the first wire-framed creatures on film. Merrie Melodies brings us Bug Parade (1941), replete with countless sight gags about a bevy of cartoon bugs. View the beauty and intricacies of the beehive while… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Emily Schleiner present I Want You To Bite Me!, an evening that examines and celebrates those glorious shape-shifting bloodsuckers, Vampires; both the lore and the fearful psychological fascination. Vampire lore, in one form or another, has existed in different cultures throughout the ages. From the Mesopotamian and Hebrew traditions, and even on to the monsters from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Laugh at and shiver from tales of vampires and their precursors! Sink your fangs into delicious excerpts from the famous Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, a… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Christine Kwon present The Hand: Peninsula Performances . With live accompaniment by Korean American musician Donghoon Han on the cine-stage, this program explores political and social powers that be, employing a diverse slate of films set against Han's unique fusion of nostalgic Korean pop and futuristic synth-based melodies. The program is bookended with sublime nature pics Earth: Man's Home (1970) and The Milky Way (1970s), which locate humankind in the larger phenomenon of creation. In between, Western-produced ethnographies of Korean and Chinese… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Hila Abraham bring you Spread Eyes and Fly ! Let the everyday unfold before you and reveal the transitory meanings and senses embedded in the shapes and colors of our worldly encounters! Come join us while we thread our way through the aisles of our prosaic existence to a more poetic one. Use your eyes to fly and see from above a world of wonder... Embrace your inner bird with the sweet tale of The Icarus Wish (1972), and learn something you haven’t known about Birds and Their Characteristics (1961). Explore an Unseen World (1970) in the science-film written by… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 55: Lost Summer , an evening of newly uncovered gems, new finds and offbeat films from America’s strangest film archive, all hand-picked by curator Stephen Parr. Tonight’s program features a look at the lost summers of wayward, wandering and just plain confused youth along with quirky highlights and histories from our nation’s most popular summer hotspots. Visit San Francisco, SoCal, Mazatlan and even Niagara Falls in all its glory. Highlights include: Banana Skin Freaks (1960s), a only-in-San Francisco shot film featuring banana skin smoking freaks in a… Read more
The 8 PM Show is Sold Out! A Second, 10 PM Show Has Been Added!! Oddball Films brings you a screening of Guest of Cindy Sherman by New York filmmakers Paul H-O and Tom Donahue, with filmmaker and subject Paul H-O in person. You’ve seen the SFMOMA exhibit; now see the reality behind it. This controversial feature documentary explores video producer Paul H-O’s relationship with his world famous artist girlfriend Cindy Sherman while exposing the dark underbelly of the NYC Art World. An interesting and witty look at the dirty politics of fame and art and the fragility of the male ego in the face… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Landon Bates bring you Hay Fever! , a selection of 16mm short films which celebrate that most magisterial of mammals: the horse. These 7 equine shorts range in genre from historical to horror, from mystical to musical, and, incidentally, none of them are westerns. We’ll kick things off with a special sort of newsreel from the San Francisco Media Archive, Blackie, Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938). Then, once out of the gate, we’ll move along to the atmospheric Philip and the White Colt (1969), directed by Richard Sarafian, involving a lonely mute boy… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present Kooks, Eccentrics and Other Visionaries, a night that celebrates those special individuals that harbor and foster miraculous obsessions. An inspiring roundup of dreamers, schemers and true believers, featuring High Wire (1984), which documents Philippe Petit, the subject of the Academy Award winning Man on Wire as he prepares for a gasp-worthy performance at NYC's St. John of the Divine Cathedral (with a sound score by Philip Glass). Revisit the reign of Emperor Norton (1948), self-proclaimed "Emperor of These United States," "Protector of… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter bring you Them's Fightin' Words, an evening of films exploring those most human responses of Anger, Aggression, Belligerence and Battle, with a little bit of everything combative, from vintage foxy boxing to a Western barroom brawl to self-defense for teachers. Two hideous puppets beat each other with bats and teach us how to deal with our frustrations in Feelings: Don't Stay Mad (1972). Charlie Chaplin doesn't look much like a boxer, but he sure does gets to punching in The Champion (1915). Marlene Dietrich's got that look and a mean right hook in… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Louis Steven present Sweet Dreams, Dark Nightmares and Haunting Hallucinations, an exploration of the surreal, inspiring, nonsensical and uncanny nature of dreams. The depiction of dreams always calls for extraordinary styles of narrative, and special effects. This program aims to show excellent filmmakers at their most indulgent, experimental and absurd. The program includes La Jetee (1962), a post-apocalyptic story, from the recently deceased Chris Marker, where time-travel is sought through powerful dreams. Watch the surreal, beautiful and disturbing images… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes Dan Streible, associate director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program and founder of the long-running Orphan Film Symposium, to bring you Space Transformations, an evening of rare and newly-preserved films that will jettison you into the far reaches of the universe. Running the gamut of space relations, from experimental filmmaker Deborah Stratman's These Blazeing Stars (2011) to Czech animation in Kosmodrome 1999 (1969), to two Cold-War era Soviet Space Race films, including the 1947 Meteorites, and Teenage Cosmonauts (1979) where we join a gaggle of… Read more
Oddball Films presents Ravenous Caverns , an evening that weaves together a collection of eco-based nature films with live electronic sound curated and performed by Amanda A. Hendricks. The mesmerizing nature films Cave Ecology (1970), The Cave Community (1961), Modern Chrysanthemum s (1951), and Owls (1976) have been arranged to be screened as backdrop for Sacred Opera , a collection of nature based audio composed and performed live by visiting artist Amanda A. Hendricks. Hendricks uses a variety of mixed and processed sounds with a layered set up of guitar pedals to create “eco-based”… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 54, a monthly screening of offbeat films, old gems and newly discovered oddities all culled from Oddball Films 50,000 film archive. Offbeat, genre-bending and wildly entertaining, this month Strange Sinema 54: Strange Sex features a truly oddball look at that confounding subject called sex. Films include the rarely-screened, award-winning documentary The Most (1963), featuring the crown prince of sex, Hugh Hefn*r in a candid (and unintentionally hilarious) profile of his erotic empire and the swingin' Playb*y Club in early 1960s Chicago, Coal Black and… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Christine Kwon present I Was Born, But... The Ocean Track . The program employs the music and mood of recording artist Frank Ocean as story elements of a visual journey through the artist's underlying themes‑the exploration of birth, sex, mundaneness and surreal existence. Highlights include much-beloved children's story Where the Wild Things Are (1974), an animated sex tutorial Sex, Booze, and Blues, and Those Pills You Use (1982), Charlie Chaplin classic The Tramp (1915) and segments from Satyajit Ray's Apur Sansar (1959) and adventure film Sheherazade (1963… Read more
