Oddball Films presents Tiki Fever! Vintage Hawaiiana. This evening of surf, tiki and Polynesian serenades offers an array of breathtaking, mesmerizing and rare films about an idyllic Hawaii including cartoons, mini-musicals, burlesque, promotional and ephemeral films from the 30s thru the 50s - all on 16mm film from the archive. See pre-jet travel footage of Waikiki beach and music by Sol Hoppii in Hawaiian Rhythm: Hawaiian Nights (1939). Then join the jet-set as two newlyweds travel from New England to Hawaii via stylish Pan Am jet in the campy promotional travelogue Wings to Hawaii (1947).… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson's 3 Year Anniversary: Shockucation's Greatest Hits, the 36th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. After 3 years of digging out the best and worst the archive has to offer, we are celebrating our 3 Year Anniversary with a sampler of all our favorite lessons thus far including sex, drugs, enemas, talking cars, exploding dolls, choking babies, and the creepiest of creepy puppets. Find all about wet dreams… Read more
Oddball Films presents Better Call Saul: Saul Bass on Film, an evening of 16mm short films showcasing one of the 20th century’s legendary graphic designers, filmmakers and title producers - Saul Bass. The man responsible for some of the most easily recognizable corporate logos, film posters and film title sequences was–in his own right–an incredible, visionary and award-winning filmmaker. Films include documentary Bass on Titles (1977) featuring the man himself musing on the creation of some of the designer’s most iconic title sequences from such films as Man with a Golden Arm, It’s a Mad Mad… Read more
Oddball Films presents Film on a Bender, a night of film drenched in booze with intoxicating cartoons, rare all-star television, sauced soundies, alcoholic commercials and (of course) shocking educational shorts; all on 16mm film from the archive. Join Patty Duke and Rue McLanahan for a very special episode of Catholic mental-hygiene show Insight: A Slight Drinking Problem (1977). Four friends head out for a day of fishing, but head over a cliff instead in Social Drinking: Fun and Fatal (1974). In the early Chuck Jones cartoon Naughty but Mice (1939), Sniffles the mouse gets drunk on cough… Read more
Oddball Films presents Animazione Demente - The Psychedelic World of Italian Cartoons, an evening of some of the trippiest, most imaginative, and mind-blowing animation to come out of Italy, all on 16mm film from our incredible animation collection, including several "brand new" finds. From the insane surrealism of Bruno Bozzetto to the whimsically sublime cut-outs of Emanuele Luzzati and Giulio Gianini, to the worldwide phenomena of Osvaldo Cavandoli's character " The Line", to the groovy mixed-collage work of Carlos Marchiori, it's more than just your average night of cartoons. From the… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 97, a monthly evening of newly discovered films, rarities and choice selects from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled this 97th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 97: “Laservision: Science Art Cinema” features films that explore the boundaries of science, art and cinema using light as a starting point. The program features a pulsating panorama of films highlighting the discovery and uses of lasers and… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present The Reel Housewives of Yesteryear, a tongue-in-cheek program of rare vintage 16mm cartoons, commercials, soundies, promotional films, educational and comedy shorts and other cinematic oddities about the old social mores of a woman's place within the family and society. Generally made by men and often misogynistic and downright offensive, these cinematic slices of life remind us just how far the modern woman has come. One housewife can't contain herself once she discovers RIT fabric dye in the swingin' promotional short Color for Joy (1962). In… Read more
Travel with ethnomusicologist and filmmaker Bess Lomax-Hawes as she reveals the profound regional spirituals of the Georgia Sea Island Singers (1964). Brilliant documentarian Les Blank's A Well Spent Life (1971) taps into the rich history of 75 year-old blues guitarist Mance Lipscomb. Featuring: A Well Spent Life (Color, 1971, Les Blank with Skip Gerson) A beautiful portrait of Texas share-cropper turned blues great, Mance Lipscomb by legendary documentarian Les Blank. Lipscomb is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time, but did not record until the 1960s. "For almost 20 years,… Read more
Oddball Films presents What the F(ilm)?! gets Political: Presidential Cine-Insanity, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane politically-themed films from our massive 16mm collection. With primary fever in the air and the democractic process playing out in all its glory, this month we're tapping into the historical and hysterical vaults of the collection with tons of cartoons, commercials, spoofs, smut, propaganda and musical numbers. A tiny Shirley Temple tarts it up and tries to cheat an honest man in the "Baby Burlesk" Polly Tix in Washington (1933). Betty Boop sings… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes back Animation Historian, Author and Professor Karl Cohen for our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly soiree featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights. This program will be a mixture of fine films from Canada, the US, the UK, Western Europe and a few things from the other side of the Iron Curtain all handpicked from several decades worth of The Tournee of Animation, a wonderful series of shows of internationally acclaimed animation. The Tournee ran from the late '60s to the '90s with 25 separate programs. For many years it… Read more
Oddball Films presents Comedy Gold - Rare Hilarities from the Archive, a night of knee-slappers, spoofs and slapstick; rare treasures, award-winners and comedy classics from greats like The Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Lucille Ball, Ernie Pintoff, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields 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) . Madeline Kahn stars in her first speaking role (well, speaking in mock Swedish) in the Bergman spoof De Düva (… Read more
Oddball Films presents Learn Your Lesson on Dating, Sex, and Marriage - A Valentine's Shockucation, the 35th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational scare films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, in honor of Valentine's Day, we're taking a look at romance with 1950s dating instructional films, VD cartoons, divorce scare films, teen pregnancies and more! Junior High students take their first plunge into dating at the Winter party, see who does it right and who needs a few extra takes to not fail… Read more
Oddball Films presents Cold-Blooded Murder , a program of 16mm shorts on that most heinous yet fascinating of crimes: homicide. From the fictional to the factual with a vintage police training film, Poe and Bradbury adaptations, dark animation, Orson Welles deconstructing a true crime classic and more, it's one night of murder and mayhem you won't see anywhere else. Films include Crime and the Criminal (1973) edited from In Cold Blood (1967) and featuring Orson Welles making literary alliterations about the book and the film, a gorgeous print of rare police training film Homicide… Read more
Oddball Films presents I, Asimov, a program of 16mm short documentaries, television episodes and short film adaptations from the great mind of Isaac Asimov. Asimov (1920-1992) began his writing career at the ripe age of 11 and went on to publish hundreds of short science fiction stories and books and dozens of non-fiction books and articles as well as coining the term "robotics", researching technology for the Department of Defense, and teaching bio-chemistry as a professor for Boston University for decades. Explore an Unseen World (1970) in the science film written by Asimov (his first foray… Read more
Oddball Films presents Learn your Lesson from the 1940s: An Antique Shockucation, the 34th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational scare films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, we're taking the way back machine to 70ish years ago to learn about hygiene from naked sailors, menstruation from Di$ney, making new friends with Dick York, not being a slut, and even giving an enema! We're declassifying two homoerotic rarities from the US Navy: dozens of naked sailors go full frontal for their medical exam… Read more
Oddball Films presents Dream Theater: Surrealist Cinema, a night of 16mm short films and animation that delve into the non-narrative world of dreams and dream logic with works by Man Ray, Roman Polanski, Georges Melies, Maurice Sendak, Istvan Szabo, Busby Berkeley and more. Realism is overrated and this program explores the magnitude of creative expression when freed from the constraints of rational and linear structures. Man Ray's surrealist classic L'Etoile de Mer (1928) captures the furtive, flirting moments of sexual desire, ever so dreamily obscured. Two men emerge from the sea and… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 96 , a monthly evening of newly discovered films, rarities and choice selects from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints , Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled this 96th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 96: Visionary Music and Beyond features films that expand the boundaries of cinema and music. The program presents rare music documentaries, experimental animation and genuinely forward-thinking films that meld together music and moving images… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes experimental animator, artist and professor Ben Ridgway to our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Ridgway's mind-blowing abstract animations feature hypnotic and futuristic geometric forms that bring to mind the interior of an alien spaceship or the otherworldly beauty of an Ernst Haeckl engraving. Ridgway has been working on his sublime and hallucinatory experimental films since 1992 and his work has been featured in film festivals around the world. His “abstract… Read more
Oddball Films presents Technicolor Dreams and Kodachrome Fantasies: The Mid-Century in Full Color, a gorgeous time capsule of 16mm ephemeral films showcasing the long-lasting beauty of two obsolete film stocks that allow us a full color glimpse into the world of yesteryear. With Hawaiian Tiki vacations, campy promotional films, beauty pageants, fashion shows, Chevy cars, and even a bird circus - all from the late 1940s-1950s in unblemished color - it's a vibrant cinematic trip back in time. A soldier stalks his lady love across the country and breaks out in song in the camptastic Greyhound… Read more
