O ddball Films and Mister WA present Children of the Cockettes (extended 90 minute roughcut). Through the lens of The Cockettes’ heritage, Mister WA explores the free-spirited and non-conformist performance torches carried by the likes of Thrillpeddlers , Trannyhack and Peaches Christ . This organically-developed documentary investigates the current resurgence of glam gender performances and theatre of the ridiculous in contemporary San Francisco. The free-form documentary integrates The Cockettes ’ esthetics down to its narrative as it weaves a cinematic quilt of queer art, performance, LGBT… Read more
Oddball Films and Lynn Cursaro present Georges Méliès and Other Movie Magic: A Festive Grab Bag . On the occasion of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo , we take a look at the timeless trickery of Georges Méliès with 3 fanciful shorts, The Witch’s Revenge , The Inn Where No Man Sleeps (both from 1903) and Baron Munchausen’s Dream (1911). Charles and Ray Eames’s legacy is highlighted in a current doc, a great excuse to screen the expressive landscape of miniatures, Toccata for Toy Trains (1957). Buddy’s Theatre (1933) takes us out to an old fashion night at the movies. Chopping and scribbling are part of… Read more
"Jason Pappariella's Places in Pieces series presents rich visual ideas that feel all at once offbeat and familiar”- Michael Robinson. Volume 3 subsists within the framework of the two previous volumes by focusing on the mundane, the peculiar, and the discarded. One difference being instead of concentrating solely on the urban landscape, rural settings are also observed. PIPv3 has a running time of 50 minutes with a soundtrack provided by Adam Parks of Land What Land and Emily Baker. The majority of the videoing took place throughout the southeastern and southwestern United States in 2009.… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 47 , a monthly screening of offbeat films, old gems and newly discovered oddities both entertaining, experimental and eye-opening, all culled from Oddball Films 50,000 film archive. This 47 th installment features Red Hot Heat (Sizzling Rhythm with a Beat) from 1937 featuring boogie woogie wildman Maurice Rocco and the Cotton Club Dancers in tinted sepiatone!, It’s Not a Commercial (1950s), WEIRD and way-out creepy commercial parody is equal parts muscleman Joe Weider and David Lynch, Death Valley Thrills (1944) an over-the-top hell ride through Death… Read more
Oddball Films presents Cinesex 101. Take notes as guest curator Neil Van Gorder guides you through the facts, pleasures and risks of sex with a collection of instructional, comical and explicit films. Start by learning the basics: Birds, Bees and Storks (1965), an animated satire about a father who sets out to explain the facts of life to his son, but becomes increasingly embarrassed to the point where his explanations are so vague as to be incomprehensible; Flowers and Bees: A Springtime Story (1973) with pollinating bees and blooming flowers shot with time-lapse photography; and HE and SHE… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Kat Shuchter present I’m Your Puppet: A Puppet Film Retrospective. With Muppets fever in the air, Oddball Films brings you a salute to all things puppet, from the lyrical to the absurd, from hand puppets to marionettes to ventriloquist dummies from the 1930s through the 1980s, you’ll wish you had someone’s hand up your back. The program includes marvelous puppet animation from two of the all-time masters; George Pal’s early Puppetoon Cavalcade of Music (1934) and Ji ř í Trnka’s last masterpiece The Hand (1966). Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas voice baby puppets in… Read more
Oddball Films and guest curator Emily Schleiner present Sweep My Chimney! From the Middle Ages, Victorian England, to the Jazz Age, laugh at the silly antics of butlers, chimney sweeps, serving maids and their capaciously demanding aristocratic masters during times of strict social hierarchy! It turns out that dealings between the one percent and ninety-nine percent of society have been tumultuous for centuries; and these films offer a wide and wacky glimpse into the past, evoking uncomfortable shudders and delighted grins, and leaving us wondering at what has changed and what hasn't. The… Read more
Guest curator Soumyaa Kapil Behrens and Oddball Films present Eau de Vie and Other Aquatic Tales, an evening of films on H2O and other fluid adventures. Submerge yourself in these sojourns - some scientific, some silly, and all a little slippery. The night would not be complete without an underwater visit from the most important filmmaker to ever traverse the seas: The Green Sea Turtle With Jacques Cousteau (1970) visits with one of our oldest marine friends, a 400lb turtle . Journey along the edge of the earth with Jay Coggeshall as he searches for a connection with a culture of people who… Read more
Oddball Films presents From Tea Leaves to Technology: Britain’s GPO Films , a program of rare 16mm films examining culture and modernity produced by the UK’s legendary GPO Film Unit. The GPO employed some of the most influential directors of creative cinema including abstract filmmakers and animators such as Len Lye, Norman McLaren and Lotte Reiniger. The program features Song of Ceylon (1934) , one of the most critically acclaimed films of the UK’s early documentary film movement produced by John Grierson (who would go on to found the National Film Board of Canada) and sponsored by the… Read more
Oddball Films hosts a benefit for Save KUSF featuring a two-hour multi-media presentation on The Velvet Underground. Richie Unterberger, author of the recent book White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day , will present rare audiovisual material from throughout the groundbreaking group's career, including film clips; audio tracks; slides of photos from the book, telling the chronological history of the band; and expert commentary from the writer himself. Plus as a special bonus, rarely seen clips of Andy Warhol from Oddball Films' collection. Date: Thursday, December 1st, 2011… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 46, a monthly screening of offbeat films, old gems and newly discovered oddities both entertaining, experimental and eye-opening, all culled from Oddball Films 50,000 film archive. This 46 th installment includes A Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), the High Priestess of experimental cinema Maya Deren’s sensual and metaphorically elusive study of the female psyche, Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom (1953), a “beatnik” influenced Academy Award winning short in stunning Technicolor, Trends (1967) a quirky, animated futurist film by Hungary’s first animated… Read more
Oddball Films presents Trance Cinema, An Evening of Ritual and Trance Films from Bali and Indonesia. This program showcases remarkable, rarely seen award-winning films plus unique shorts exploring the unique cultural rituals and ceremonies of Bali and Indonesia. Films include Trance and Dance in Bali (1937-39), Island of the Spirits, Ma’Bugi: Trance of the Toraja, A Balinese Gong Orchestra (1971) and the cinema curio Belles of Bali. Trance Cinema is part of a series of ongoing film programs exploring ritual, higher consciousness and altered states of awareness. Date: Friday, November 25th at… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Neil Van Gorder present An Evening with the Insane. This program of freshly unearthed rarities from Oddball Films’ 50,000-reel film archive will make you feel like you’re insane, think that the filmmaker is crazy, or plainly demonstrate some very bizarre behavior. Filled with cockeyed screen gems, some of the evening’s highlights include Free Fall (1964), by the brilliant, but troubled auteur Arthur Lipsett, Holy Ghost People (1967), Peter Adair’s legendary verite doc showcases a West Virginia Caucasian Pentecostal congregation whose religious fervor includes trances… Read more
Guest curator Jeremy Menzies and Oddball Films present Pop-Up Film Food Feast, a program that will stimulate your taste buds and answer a range of who, what and where questions about food and food production. From strictly educational to satirically humorous, this eclectic mix of vintage films will take you from the simple life down on the cattle ranch to the high speed daily grind of peanut butter production. Films include, You and Your Food starring Jiminy Cricket, Chemical Feast with Marshall Effron, In the Night Kitchen based on Maurice Sendak’s children’s book, Artistry in Sugar with… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Lynn Cursaro present, Seven Deadly Sins, Over Easy. Come see all styles of sin in a screening that re-examines greed, lust, vanity, sloth/despair, gluttony, envy and wrath! Take advantage of this rare opportunity to see gluttony, lust and greed in Peter Foldes’ acclaimed computer animated short Hunger/La Faim (1974), the mild misery of Duke Ellington's A Bundle of Blues (1933), and The Dreamer (ca.1964) shows us the lighter side of lust in glorious Technicolor! Envy (1974) dishes up some grade school drama over a coveted bike, and “character looks” turn vanity on its… Read more
Monkey Time! Apes, Chimps and Gorillas, a program featuring, pseudo human activities, animal antics and anthropological histories. Shorts include a rare episode of the TV series Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp , Chimp the Cowboy, Zippy the Chimp, Planet of the Apes movie trailers, Snow Monkeys of Japan, Chimps in Training and Show Business (!) and Monkeys, Apes and Man: The Chasm , with Dian Fossey and mountain gorillas, Jane Goodall with chimpanzees, and Wisconsin scientists studying rhesus monkeys. Plus! King Kong, Chimps in Space and more ! Date: Friday, November 11th at 8:00PM Venue: Oddball… Read more
The San Francisco Media Archive presents Home Movie Day – San Francisco in conjunction with the 9 th Annual Worldwide Home Movie Day celebration. Members of the public are invited to submit their 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm home movies to SFMA by October 12 th where they will be inspected by HMD projectionists and shared with an enthusiastic audience in a day-long celebration of amateur filmmaking and home movie preservation. As a special bonus, qualified films donated to the archive will be transferred free of charge and digital copies given to donors at a later date. Throughout the day there will… Read more
