Oddball Films and Guest Curator Soumyaa Kapil Behrens present, The San Francisco Experiment: A Grand Disaster. This new monthly series takes a look at the cinematic and pedagogical history of this great city. Part visual archeology and part experiment this program sheds lights on our fair city's darkest corners and it's most sophisticated triumphs. Featuring, the classic 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Film (ca. 1930) with awesome footage from the turn-of-the-century quake aftermath and The Ageless Cable Cars of San Francisco (1955) documenting the urban growth along the relic laden journey of… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Neil Van Groder present Bipolar!: Mountain of Joy/Pit of Despair. Get ready for a roller-coaster ride of emotions in this evening of rare and contrasting films filled with empty joy against the saddest and most despondent tales in the archive. Your uncontrollable tears are sure to be followed by unstoppable, hysterical laughter in this program featuring: Bolivia, The Tin Mountain (1979), a film documenting the awful labor conditions and life of Bolivian tin miners; I am a Mime (1971), colorful facial close-ups and flashes of children’s art describe the art of… Read more
Oddball Films curator Stephen Parr presents the 50 th installment of our monthly series Strange Sinema. This very special interactive program Strange Sinema 50: How it’s Made!features an evening of how-to film making including How to Make a Movie Without a Camera (1972) takes a cue from Len Lye and Stan Brakhage and shows kids how to be avant-garde film stars; History of the Cinema (1958) a British animated history of the cinema, Begone Dull Care, a cameraless film by internationally renowned National Film Board of Canada animator Norman McLaren, with jazz score by Oscar Peterson, Camera… Read more
Oddball Films hosts a benefit for Save KUSF featuring the great Ralph Carney& Guests live on the Cinestage! Mr. Carney is a jazz multi-instrumentalist/horn player who has spent the better part of the last 2 decades criss-crossing the world, on stage and in studios with the likes of Tom Waits, Jonathan Richman, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Elvis Costello to name only a few. Plus! A selection of the finest animation films with the jazziest soundtracks in the Oddball Films collection including Dave Fleischer’s Minnie The Moocher (1932) featuring Betty Boop, Bimbo and the music of… Read more
Oddball Films, in association with San Francisco Cinematheque and 3rd i Films, is proud to present EXPERIMENTA India. What are possible cinematic entry points to addressing the context of experimental filmmaking in India? From experiments in animation, found footage and stylised montage in the late 60’s and early 70’s to the most recent innovations in experimental narrative, this selection of films and videos , never before seen in the US, offer a peek into the aesthetic and socio-political complexities of experimental filmmaking in India. Festival Director Shai Heredia of EXPERIMENTA India… Read more
"A MAJOR EVENT! Don't wait for this to come to a theater near you - getting Gance's magnum opus up on a screen is a herculean task!" - Martin Scorsese, Vanity Fair (March 2012) Abel Gance's epic NAPOLEON is the Holy Grail of silent masterpieces. In the early 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola toured a 4-hour road show version that many still consider their most unforgettable movie experience ever. Now, thirty-one years later, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is finally presenting legendary film historian Kevin Brownlow's complete 5 1/2 hour restoration in the United States, along with the… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Margaret Jamieson present Get Lucky . Look out! Is it good luck, bad luck, lady luck or no luck at all? A playful blend of high advertising, low camp, sweet narratives and the real explanation for superstitions this program offers everything from Motorcycles on Ice to the Evil Eye to Lucky Seven Sampson - you’ll walk out of the screening looking for quarters on the sidewalk but expecting pianos to fall from the sky. Standouts include: Cannes 1959 Special Jury Prize and Academy Award winner The Golden Fish (1959) a charming film about a boy, his fish, his bird… Read more
Get on your footy pajamas and get ready to shuffle down "Memory Lane" as Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter bring you the complete 1974 Emmy award-winning Television broadcast of Free to be You and Me . Marlo Thomas gathered together a cavalcade of stars to teach children positive, “modern” values, like gender and race-equality, tolerance, selflessness and most-importantly singing and dancing. Roberta Flack and Michael Jackson play dress-up and accept their physical shortcomings in When We Grow Up . Mel Brooks voices a cheeky baby puppet, Alan Alda lends his voice to the story of a… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Emily Schleiner present Fooled By A Feeling! , an evening of films about self-fulfilling prophecies, wacky prejudice, and, ultimately, the process of making difficult choices. Featuring excerpts from Optimist-Pessimist: Which Are You? , an edited version of the 1975 Pollyanna story. Watch the fabulous animated musical Dr. Seuss on the Loose: The Sneetches, The Zax, and Green Eggs and Ham (1973) , a classic bundle of stories that deal with themes like prejudice, materialism, and compromise, vocals by Allan Sherman. See Square Pegs, Round Holes (1974) a kooky… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Joe Garrity present The Conscious Clock: Perspectives on Time and Reality , a program of rare and unique short films exploring the temporal dimensions of the outer and inner worlds. From objective measurement to subjective experience of change, we examine the illusory nature of time and its impression on our lives. The program includes The Story of Time (1949), a dazzling stop-motion short from the Rolex watch company, and Leisure (1976), Bruce Petty’s Oscar-winning animated history of time spent at play. Natural rhythm is explored in What Time Is Your Body? (… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Idea of India , a program of films exploring the many facets of Indian culture from science to spirituality, from art to anthropology, from ritual to religion and more. The program focuses on the fascinating, all-encompassing and yet contradictory concepts of Indian culture and its people. Films feature a diverse selection of films examining various aspects of Indian life from the 1930s to the present day featuring rare home movies, seldom screened ethnographic films, made-in-India docs, award-winning portraits of Indian culture and footage of present day religious… Read more
Oddball Films and programmer Antonella Bonfanti present Mighty Mr. Marshall McLuhan. Famous for coining the phrase "The Medium is the Message" and predicting "The Global Village" in the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan revolutionized how we think of technology and culture. Featuring films that reflect his writings and influence as a communication and media theorist, this program's centerpiece is Picnic in Space (Bruce Bacon, 1967). McLuhan explicates all the prime concepts of his cultural theories, but in constant reference to visual, auditory and physical space. Extremely rare and quite poppy, this… Read more
Guest curator Soumyaa Kapil Behrens and Oddball Films present, Act Like A Toaster, an evening of 16mm films on the brain and all its potentialities. From creativity to industry and perception to physiology, this collection of shorts connects the dots between the human brain and how it manifests in the concrete frame of the real world. See the impact of man deconstructed to his central nervous system and sometimes even tested on animals. Highlights include legendary Saul Bass' Academy Award winning documentary short, Why Man Creates (1968) that unlocks the mutations of the creative mind, and… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter bring you Stop-Motion Explosion!, 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.” Blast off with original 1957 Gumby shorts, in which our little clay buddy goes to Space, nearly gets eaten by a chocolate éclair and trampled by a giant glob. Frog and Toad Together (1987) brings to life the classic children’s book with the adventures of the… Read more
Oddball Films presents Bass on Titles, an evening of films showcasing one of the 20th century’s legendary graphic designers, filmmakers and title producers - Saul Bass. Films include documentary Bass on Titles (1982) featuring some of the designer’s iconic title sequences and logos; Notes on the Popular Arts (1977), explores escapism in American popular media through a smorgasbord of bizarre dream sequences; with exquisite timelapse cinematography, The Searching Eye (1964), follows a boy who sees the history of man in a sand castle and the creation of the earth in a piece of rock; and A Short… Read more
Oddball Films presents Sexiest Strange Sinema. This 49 thinstallment of Oddball Films’ monthly legendary and award winning Strange Sinema series spotlights sex in cinema - from risqué to raunchy, from blatant sexual excess to sublime sensuality. Highlights from the program include Seaside Films nudie cutie Sadie the Sunbather (1940s), camp trailers for films like White Mama, Black Mama (1973), The Stewardesses (1969) and the rare Dennis Hopper trailer for his orgy filled hippie love film American Dreamer (1971) (Hopper destroyed all existing prints), erotic tidbits from the Best of the New… Read more
Oddball Films presents Visionary Design: The Cinema of 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. There is so much to say about the legacy of the Eames’s that an entire period has been named after them. This program includes An Eames Celebration (1975), a documentary about the… Read more
Oddball Films, with Lynn Cursaro, presents: Private Lives/Public Spaces: The Many Lives of Cities. This program takes a freewheeling look at cities, real and imagined, as viewed by an individual’s lens. From classic cartoon, government propaganda, experimental documentary and story book, urban life is where people explore facets of their private selves. A pair of siblings make a home in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler . You . . . functions as an ode to both a girl and Budapest. The Civil Defense nightmare of Our Cities Must Fight will… Read more
O ddball Films and guest curator Hannah Airriess present Ancient and Imagined Worlds. This program features films concerning worlds beyond what we occupy; worlds that have been lost to time and worlds that are products of fantastic imagination. The short documentary The Inner World of Jorge Luis Borges (1972) acts as a foundation for this program. Borges masterfully creates worlds and civilizations spanning all of history in his short stories and essays, and through interviews filmed in his native Buenos Aires he explains his relationship to mythology, time, and space. In a clip from The Lost… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Joe Garrity present Is This Love?: Uncertain Hearts and More Certain Parts . You’ll-know-it-when-you-feel-it in the program that shelves the rose-colored glasses and examines love as it really is: ambivalent, compulsive, and defying definition. From first dates to free love, sex to sects, we search far and wide for that most elusive feeling. The program includes George Kaczender’s cool 1966 gem The Game , featuring mod rocking teens fumbling for play, and Richard Williams’ animated morality tale Love Me, Love Me, Love Me (1962), where when it comes to love, “no… Read more
