Oddball Films Media
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Mar 3, 2013
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Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10 - Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117
Highlights Include:
Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out, until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others. Returning to earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward--into the hand of the sleeping picnicker--with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell. It is all done in a single, continuous, seamless shot. It’s also one of the most ambitious tracking shots in the history of cinema. The film has been chosen by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
Powers of Ten (Color, 1968)
Undoubtedly the most famous of the Eames Films, Powers of Ten is probably one of the most watched short films of the post-war era. Powers of Ten presents the profound idea of orders of magnitude, with the subtitle of the film being: A Film Dealing With the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero.
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House: After Five Years of Living (Color, 1955)
A beautiful collage of photographs of the exterior and interior of the house and studio, designed and built by Charles Eames, Case Study House #8. Built on a hill in California overlooking the ocean, this modern and unique structure reflect the interests of Charles and Ray Eames and shows the influence of Japanese simplicity in the architecture and furnishings. Some of their artwork and personal objects are also shown, illuminating their personal style. Shows shadows on a corner wall, part of a table laid for breakfast, a bowl of apples, a painting, flowers in brilliant colors. Charles and Ray Eames designed the house for themselves in 1949; made entirely from standard, industrial parts, the Eames House is beautiful, functional and a true home. They lived there for the rest of their lives (Charles died in 1978, Ray in 1988)
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Toys occupy several of the Eames films, including Tops, a purely visual film that documents the short life span of a spinning top. It’s essentially a silent anthropological film and captures tops from different cultures and eras. The Eames Office contained a menagerie of toys, and it was Charles who once asked rhetorically, “Who would say that pleasure is not useful?” Tops was shot from the extreme perspectives of close-ups – an expressionistic technique that lets the audience experience toys as if from the eyes of a child. Whether set into motion by the twist of the fingers or the pull of a string, these colorful tops are even more beautiful seen through the eyes of Charles and Ray Eames. The stunning variety of the tops featured here is almost as dizzying as the whirling toys themselves. Composer Elmer Bernstein, a frequent Eames collaborator, spins the musical spell.
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Legends of the design world, Charles and Ray Eames had their own way of looking at everything and this table-top epic shows it. The best cinema craft was adapted to make this miniature world of trains, dolls and other tiny treasures completely alive. Leave it to the Eames to put viewers inside a toy train! Scored by renowned composer Elmer “Magnificent Seven” Bernstein.
A Communication Primer (1953, Color)
An early and excellent example of Charles and Ray Eames' ability to simply convey complex ideas, this film uses simple shapes and deliberate action sequences to explain the basics of contemporaneous communication theory.
IBM Mathematica Peep Show (Color, 1961)
Also known as "IBM Mathematics Peep Shows," these five short films were commissioned by IBM and created by Charles and Ray Eames for inclusion in the 1961 Mathematica exhibition that took place at the California Museum of Science and Industry and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Like Powers of Ten, each of the five Mathematica Peep Shows was a succinct and poignant presentation of a single mathematical concept, communicated through the medium of film, mostly through animation with voice-over narration.
If there’s one theme all the Eames’ films share, it’s clarity. Nearly of the Eames’ films can be understood and appreciated by audiences of all ages, and all backgrounds. Charles & Ray were active at an pivotal juncture in the history of design. They were working in post-war America, where business was experiencing unprecedented growth, and the American public had acquired a taste for good design (for just one bit of evidence, see the film American Look (1958), sponsored by Chevrolet). They were working for IBM — one of the most affluent companies in the world, and a company helmed by Thomas J Watson, Jr, an exec who was famously concerned with the image of his company.
Charles & Ray Eames were artists adept at an astonishing number of disciplines. They produced museum exhibitions, architecture, logotypes, toys, slide-shows, furniture, books, photography, paintings films. However, their films are the least discussed of their work. They are one of the few American artists with an entire era named after them and their films contain some of the most original ideas of the century.
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