Oddball Films Media
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Jul 24, 2014
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Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Highlights include:
Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman (aka The Cameraman's Revenge) (B+W, 1912, Vladislav Starevich)
A cynical work about infidelity and jealousy among the insects. Vladislav Starevich was a Russianand Frenchstop-motionanimatornotable as the author of the first puppet-animated film (i.e. The Beautiful Lukanida(1912).
A fire breaks out in a forest inhabited by many animals. A painting vision created in a technique similar to the method used in realization of the movie "Horse". Witold Giersz has described his art as an attempt at "bringing painting to life". He declares that he isn’t the kind of director-animator that tries to give some sort of philosophical meaning to his films at all costs. According to him, animated films are chiefly defined by the use of plastic arts, though a good plastic artist might as well be a philosopher. Giersz regards himself as a discoverer of a new animation technique, which "involves animating with a paintbrush in front of a film camera".
Le Retour a la Raison (B+W, 1923, Man Ray)
A lush and hypnotic experimental film in which white specks and shapes gyrate over a black background, a light-striped torso, and a spinning egg crate - It consists of animated textures, Rayographs and the torso of Kiki of Montparnasse. One of the first Dadaist films and the first film made by Man Ray when he relocated to Paris.
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A short silent American film produced and distributed by Edison Manufacturing Company in 1895. It is one of several released by the studio in the late 19th century. Each short film depicts the popular serpentine dance performed by Annabelle Moore. Many of the prints were distributed in color, which was hand-tinted.
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Legendary Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's stop-motion films combine creepiness and wit in a way no one has ever accomplished. His penchant for object-animation has led to living dolls, dancing meat and baby tree-demons. In Jabberwocky, Svankmajer's first adaptation of Lewis Carroll's world, described by the director as "a Freudian record of the development of a child through all its stages: through homosexuality and Sado-Masochism to rebellion against the father" - !!
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After the war, Norman McLaren made A Little Phantasy on a Nineteenth Century Painting, a frame by frame animated film based on a pastel reproduction of this painting by Boecklin with a black background. The peaceful island is turned into the backdrop of a nightmare. A Little Phantasy on a Nineteenth Century Painting is very different from the most well-known works by Norman McLaren: the abstract animated drawings with twirling shapes scratched directly onto the film.
About the curator:
John Cannizzaro grew up in New England where he made several short films before relocating to Los Angeles in 1990. There he completed his first mini feature, Critical Mass, which was reviewed by Paul Malcolm in the Nov. 22, 1996 LA Weekly as a “low key tale of guttersnipe mysticism…Critical Mass is heavy on mood and symbolism with Cannizzaro drawing some beautiful compositions…What’s most intriguing about the film is the connection it makes between spiritualism and ennui”. Still working primarily in Super 8 film, he has completed several more short films including “Gulliver’s Travels” and “50 Feet That Shook The World” (both made for LA Flicker’s ‘Attack of the 50 Foot Reels’ which have played in festivals around the world) as well as a full-length feature film “The Left Hand Path”. He is also the founder of Smokehouse Films – a film production company and an ever increasing archive of rare ethnographic, experimental, and unique 16mm films.