Oddball Films presents Suck on This! - Vamps and Vampires, a night of 16mm bloodsucking beasts and bewitching babes from the Oddball crypt. Sink your fangs into delicious excerpts from the famous Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, a confection that introduced the legendary Count Dracula and his spider eating minion Renfield to the silver screen. In Mrs. Amworth (1975), a strange illness is plaguing a small English town; the locals think it's the gnats, but a doctor is out to prove that the sweet lady down the road is one of the oldest vampires in England. French clown Pierre Etaix wrote,… Read more
Oddball Films is pleased to co-present at 3rd i’s 13th ANNUAL SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL (Oct 22-25 in San Francisco; Nov 1 in Palo Alto). Labor of Love Aditya Vikram Sengupta, India, 2014, 84mins Where: New People Cinema When Sunday, October 25, 1 pm Lyrical and intimate, this unique cinematic experience delves into the lives of an ordinary couple whose competing work schedules keep them apart. Sengupta's arresting visuals build into to a beautiful, dreamlike crescendo, while the resonant soundscape and retro score fill the silences with deep emotional textures. An… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes filmmaker Karan Bali for a screening of his recent documentary An American in Madras. This compelling documentary primarily traces the American-born filmmaker Ellis R. Dungan’s years in India. Born in 1909 and hailing from Barton, Ohio, Dungan studied cinematography at USC before departing for the shores of India on February 25th, 1935 intending to stay for 6 months but ending up staying for 15 years. Without speaking a word of the language, Dungan brought many technical innovations to the developing Tamil Film Industry of the 1930s and ‘40s, and infused a sense of… Read more
Oddball Films continues its creepy month of October with Cursed Kids - The Horror of Childhood, with a triple feature of short horror films for and about children mixed with a smattering of educational scare films, animation and musical shorts, all on 16mm from the archive. Peter Medak directs The Rocking Horse Winner (1977), a demonic adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s chilling story about a boy who rocks himself into clairvoyant trances in order to predict horse racing winners and help his mother get out of debt. Di$ney gets into the horror game with Bette Davis and an alternate dimension of… Read more
Oddball Films Presents Czech Please! an evening of mind-blowing animation from the former Czechoslovakia. From cut-outs to puppets to stop-motion; from the adorable to the dark and thought-provoking, this evening will open your eyes to the brilliance, vision and creativity of some of the great Czech animators. Red Stain (Color 1963, Zdenek Miler) A much darker vision from the man that brought us the joyful and colorful Little Mole cartoons. A somber tale of fisherman and his small son who try to retain peace after they discover that their country has been invaded and that an armory has been… Read more
The San Francisco Media Archive and Oddball Films would like to welcome you to Home Movie Day in conjunction with the 13th Annual Worldwide Home Movie Day with a free home movie workshop and inspection and a free screening of offbeat and bizarre home movies. So, bring us your films: 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, and even VHS home movies to SFMA where they will be inspected and viewed by HMD projectionists. Following the clinic, we'll be having a free screening of Bizarro Home Movies from the 1950s-1970s that everyone is welcome to attend. The home-made hijinks may include (lineup subject to change)… Read more
Oddball Films presents Learn your Lesson on the School Bus: An Accidental Shockucation, the 31st 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 Halloween, we're bringing you the gruesome, horrifying and deadly history of the school bus safety film with everything from hand puppets, felt punching bags with faces, ghost romances and little goody-goodies to round out the utter carnage! From Gene Starbecker - the "father of the school bus safety film… Read more
Oddball Films presents Southern Gothic - The Haunting Tales of Ambrose Bierce, a chilling night of deadly delights from the master of the twist ending. Ambrose Bierce, whose Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Kurt Vonnegut called the greatest of American short stories, was a master of psychological terror. His short, unpretentious stories - largely set during the civil war - often featured abrupt twist endings and their simplicity leant themselves perfectly to filmic interpretation. From Robert Enrico comes the brilliant (as well as Cannes and Oscar-winning) adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes photographer and filmmaker Bill Daniel to our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Daniel will be here in person, screening his documentary Who is Bozo Texino? chronicling the secret world of hobo graffiti artists, as well as presenting his pop-up punk photo show Tri-X Noise featuring 30 years of underground photography. Ride the cinematic rails with Daniel's film Who is Bozo Texino? a 16-year chronicle of the search for the source of a ubiquitous and mythic rail… Read more
A few seconds of the last part of the trailer for “Goin’ South.” “Nightfall” (DXW, suspense), “Outpost in Malaysia” (B&W, suspense), “Marriage on the Rocks,” starring Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, “Brainstorm,” “Operation Petticoat” starring Tony Curtis & Cary Grant, “Flower Drum Song,” Asian musical, “Jennifer (horror, suspense), “One of Our Aircraft is Missing” (Mystery), “Jeopardy” (Action), “Honeymoon Killers” (Horror), “The Steel Lady,” “The Blue Max” (starring George Peppard and Ursula Andress, “Everything I Have is Yours” 1) Marijuana (1936) 2) Maniac (1934) 3) Universal… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 93, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 93rd program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 93: Trance Cinema is an exploration into the cinematic documentation of ritual, trance and altered states. Drawing on rare ethnographic and historic acquisitions from the archives, this program showcases ritualized trance states,… Read more
Oddball Films presents The Erté Era - Deco, Design and Dance from the 20s and 30s, a night of films and clips that highlight Art Deco design. From musical delights to animation, with experimental, documentary, comedy and ephemeral gems, it's going to be a gorgeous and entertaining evening. In Erté (1979), style icon Diana Vreeland narrates a portrait of the man that coined the phrase and single-handedly started the Art Deco movement through his art, advertisement, and costume design. See the construction of some of the Big Apple's deco architecture in Twenty Four Dollar Island (1927), Robert… Read more
Oddball Films presents Futures Past: Vintage Visions of Tomorrow, a night of films from the 20th Century that attempt to envision and predict the future. From documentary to comedy, sci-fi, animation, experimental and more, this is a multi-genred night of futurism from the 1900s through the 1980s. Walter Cronkite and the folks at CBS News look forward to domesticity in the 21st Century including paper furniture and 3D TVs in At Home 2001 (1967). Georges Melies applies his patented movie magic to imagine the very first lunar mission in A Trip to the Moon (1902). Mr. Fox is excited to come back… Read more
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 92, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 films, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 92nd program of classic, strange, and unusual films. For Strange Sinema 92: Too Cool, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has curated a super-cool collection of teenage shorts that scream out COOL. These films, drawn from diverse genres such as mental hygiene, promotional, independent shorts, cartoons and documentaries examine the… Read more
Oddball Films welcomes media maker Tommy Becker to our Cinema Soiree Series , a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Becker will be presenting Passing Periods- Reflections Through a Classroom Window , an expanded cinema performance that explores and celebrates the dynamics of the high school landscape and complexities of relations in the cultural construct of the classroom and beyond. Becker mixes poetics, performance, props and pop music into an eye-popping and toe-tapping experience. B lending virtuoso editing… Read more
Oddball Films is proud to present the seventh annual installment in the innovative interview-based series MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) featuring a rare appearance of one of the first ladies of the Beat Generation: poet, playwright and artist ruth weiss. For one night only, Los Angeles media artist and curator Gerry Fialka will interview weiss in person on Oddball's Cine-Stage. MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) is an engaging interview by Gerry Fialka with modern thinkers who will address the metaphysics of their callings and the nitty-gritty of their crafts. ruth weiss was one of the pre-… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Cartoons go to War: Animated Propaganda from WWII, a night of outlandish, hilarious and didactic cartoons from the 1940s (and a couple from the 1930s) calling for a patriotic spirit, heralding the soldiers, shilling war bonds and warning against the scourges of malaria and The Axis Powers. During World War II, cartoons changed to reflect the times, both heralding and roasting the war effort, doing their part to grease the American propaganda machine, demonizing the enemy and guilting viewers into patriotism, or simply just adding a bit of humor… Read more
Oddball Films presents Orphan Offerings: Refugee Reels from the 3TON Treasure Chest, a unique program of various notable non-theatrical shorts, all on 16MM , this time selected from the stacks of 3TON Cinema’s DIY “film orphanage” in Oakland! Guest Curator Montgomery Cantsin returns to unravel a hidden history of so-called non-theatrical film—one which bursts at the seams with beautiful bastards, expired gems, quiet masterpieces and more. This evening’s reels, hand picked and wrangled by 3TON’s co-founder, runs the gamut: from fun to factual, animation to ethnographic, and from 1903 to 2014.… Read more
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson from Alexa Kenin - A Memorial Afterschool Special Triple Feature, a special tribute to the child star Alexa Kenin who passed away 30 years ago to this day, under disputed and curious circumstances. A talented girl with a seemingly bright future, Alexa Kenin died tragically at the age of 23, just as she was set to cross over into adult roles. Cast and crew on her final film Pretty in Pink were told she died of asthma, while others heard rumors of being beaten to death by her boyfriend, and still others believe it was a drug… Read more
Oddball Films presents What the F(ilm)?! 13: Cine-Insanity from the Archive, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This compendium of 16mm madness is too strange to be believed and too baffling to be forgotten. This time around, we've got furry orange aliens, animated tuberculosis germs, circus chimps, sexy frogs, Smokey the Bear as a baby, deep fried delights, donkey baseball and more! Meet Trogmoffy, an orange fuzzy alien from Saturn who has come to Earth to learn proper grammar in the terrifying children's primer The Adventures… Read more
