Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly evening of old finds, rare gems and newly discovered films from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints-the largest archive in Northern California, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 101st program of offbeat, ethnographic, experimental and unusual films. Strange Sinema 101: Into the Ozone: Hobos, Hitch-Hikers, Gypsies and Road Runners is a genre-bending 16mm film program exploring global and pop cultural concepts of travel and nomadic life. This program was specifically curated for the Cinema Ephemera: The Festival of Useful Film in Baltimore later this month. This wide-ranging program begins with rare newsreels of a Mexican Migrant Round Up (1953) and Runaway Boys (1953) two fragments foreground our travel program and moves into the surreal Tin Can Tourist (1937), an animated short featuring Farmer Al Falfa and his dog hitting the road in their modern, gadget-loaded trailer home, followed by a trailer for King of the Gypsies (1978), portraying the criminal ways and violent lives of a group of modern day gypsies based in New York City. Next up is Riff Raffy Daffy (1948). Watch policeman Porky Pig roust a homeless Daffy Duck from a city park only to battle it out with him later in a Macy’s store! The Scenemakers (1960) is an unintentionally hilarious long-form commercial presented by Monsanto (!) and J.C. Penneys’. See America in retro style with Jan, Jill and Amy, three swingin’ gals crossing the country, but always making sure to dress their best-early 60s style! Next watch the classic Easy Rider (1969) trailer featuring Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda as two stoned-out bikers hitting the road to discover America in this anti- establishment classic. We follow up with the cult black motorcycle gang rock sci-fi musical (phew!) Darktown Strutters (1975) trailer showcasing lots of souped up babes on bikes and dazzling stunts (with music by the legendary Dramatics), while Eric Martin’s mesmerizing experimental USA Film (1977) collapses 4,000 coast-to-coast miles (From Washington DC to San Francisco) into a high-speed 17 minute single-framed opus. The Hitch-Hiker (1953) features a naughty hitch-hiker creating chaos on the roadway when she strips for a ride! More laughs ensue in the hokey, humorous novelty short Brooklyn Goes to Las Vegas (1956) portraying a caustic wandering Brooklynite who spends a night in Sin City, strikes it rich and heads home with a wagonload of cash and women. Exploitation trailers Naughty Stewardesses/Blazing Stewardesses (1974) show us fly girls and their “sexy” side of air travel. We round out our evening’s travels with Polish director Wladyslaw Slesicki’s fascinating Gypsies (1973), a rare non-narrative verité portrait of a nomadic Gypsy caravan traveling through Europe in the early 1970s. Plus! The Tramp (1915) featuring the silent star Charlie Chaplin as a hobo who falls in love with a girl he rescued. Everything screened on 16mm film from our stock footage archive.
Date: Thursday, June 16th 2016 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00, Limited Seating, RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or rsvp@oddballfilms.com
Web: www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Tin Can Tourist (B+W, 1937, Dir. Mannie Davis)
Riff Raffy Daffy (B+W, 1948, Dir. Arthur Davis)
USA Film (Color, 1977, Dir. Eric Martin)
A caustic Brooklynite spends a night in Sin City, strikes it rich and heads home with a wagonload of cash and women. Featuring remarkable footage of old Las Vegas narrated through the voice of Arthur Cohen - a true Brooklynite. A laugh riot!
The Tramp (1915, B+W, Dir. Charlie Chaplin)
Curator Biography:
Stephen Parr’s programs have explored the erotic underbelly of sex-in-cinema (The Subject is Sex), the offbeat and bizarre (Oddities Beyond Belief), the pervasive effects of propaganda (Historical/Hysterical?) and oddities from his archives (Strange Sinema). He is the director of Oddball Films, a stock film company and the San Francisco Media Archive (www.sfm.org), a non-profit archive that preserves culturally significant films. He is a co-founder of Other Cinema DVD and a member of the Association of Moving Archivists (AMIA) where he is a frequent presenter.
Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world. To search through 20,000 clips of eclectic footage, visit our website atoddballfilms.com.
Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.