Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or info@oddballfilm.com
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Reel_Rock_PR.pdf

On Friday, March 4, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare rock ‘n’ roll performance film, clips, promos and shorts from the 1960s and 1970s, all on 16mm film from the Oddball Films Archive.   Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.   Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to:  info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Something Else (Color, 1970)
Actor/comedian John Byner hosted 25 episodes of this television music program in1970, capturing some incredibly rare and unique performances by the known and obscure. It’s astonishing to think that you could turn on the telly and catch total freakouts by Frijid Pink and the amazing prog-psych “Cricket Song” by Mephistopheles (featuring some wild optical printing film effects), as well as Creedence and Roberta Flack- amidst an anarchic comedy and wild hippy dance numbers.  With The Action Faction Dancers and featuring: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Three Dog Night, Mephistopheles, Frijid Pink, Phil Ochs, Norman Greenbaum, Roberta Flack and more.

Somethin' Else!

The Beatl*s Come To Town (Color, 1963, Techniscope)
Warner- Pathé produced newsreel short of the Beatl*s with fans, hamming it up and performing “She Loves You” and “Twist and Shout” on stage.  Beautiful Technicolor and shot in widescreen Techniscope- will be shown utilizing our new Cinemascope lens.

Early Mop Top Promo

Monkees Out-takes (Color, 1967)
Silent out-takes from the Monkees TV show- backstage shenanigans and flubbed takes.

The Faux Four

The Dave Clark 5 (Color, 1964)
Following the success of their special Beatles short, Warner- Pathé jumped on the Tottenham-based Dave Clark 5 as their main rival (hard to believe today).  More sumptuous color and fan pandemonium as the 5 perform “Bits and Pieces” and “Glad All Over”.  Great stuff, but Tottenham and the DC5 didn’t stand a chance against Liverpool and the Fab Four.

DC5

New York City! (Color, 1968)
Straight boy meets straight girl in this “Fly the Friendly Skies of United” promo. Our “swingin’ squares” discover the sights and sounds of the Big Apple as they tour the touristy Times Square hot spots. Later they hit a belly dance lounge and end up at the famed club Salvation featuring the 60s garage rock band “The Churls” (with psychedelic backdrops). The evening ends with our two lovebirds heading home on motorbike-to mom!

"Peasants" in Olde English

Jefferson Airplane/Golden Gate Park (B+W, 1967)
Unique, unknown silent amateur footage of the Jefferson Airplane performing and some appropriately trippy Golden Gate Park experimentation!

Feed Your Head

Zachariah (Color, 1971, excerpt)
The legendary jazz drummer Elvin Jones steals the show in this crazy psychedelic western (starring Don “Miami Vice” Johnson and Dick Van “8 is Enough” Patten!). In the role of outlaw Job Cain, in this clip he plays with The James Gang (featuring future Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh) on a song called “Laguna Salada”, then destroys the place with a wild drum solo.

Elvin Jones as Job Cain

Braverman’s Condensed Cream of Beatl*s (color, 1973)
Oscar-winning short traces the history of the Beatl*s utilizing a fast moving collage of stills, clips, art and album covers edited to the beat of their brilliant music. This non-narrative film showcases the flip, exuberant 60s to the end of the sober, socially conscious decade as we watch airport mob scenes, madcap press conferences, records, concerts, books, posters and movies, all tumble past in a dizzy spasm of bliss.

Mop Tops Light Up

Black Sabbath Parade (Color, 1970)
One-of-a-kind footage of a pre-gay pride parade welcoming Black Sabbath to San Francisco.  Full freak flags were flying for this Embarcadero parade- trannies, hippie busses, weird floats- all in honor of future reality TV show star Ozzy Osborne and the Sabbath.

It’s every British band’s dream to play the States. When we got there finally, we f***ed as many groupies as we could. In San Francisco, they even had a Black Sabbath parade! Coming from Birmingham, England, where the f***in’ sun never shines, it was magic to us. – Ozzy Osbourne

BS in SF

On Friday, February 25, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare 40s, 50s and 60s TV shows, Soundies and musical clips featuring the late, great Johnny Cash plus other legends and the forgotten artists of country music and rockabilly.   Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.   Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to:  info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Star Route: A Salute to Johnny Cash (B+W, 1962, with earlier performances)
Star Route was a syndicated TV show hosted by cowboy film star Rod Cameron and featured a house band with Glen Campbell, guitar wizard Billy Strange and the (mostly grown up) Collins Kids.  The salute to Johnny Cash episode features Johnny and the Tennessee Two performing Big River, Come Pickin’ Time, Cry Cry Cry, Five Foot High and Rising, I Got Stripes, and the spiritual God Has My Future Laid Away.  The Collins Kids, Glen and the band also have their way with I Still Miss Someone, Luther Played the Boogie and a medley of Cash hits.

Cash Composes

Ranch Party (B+W, 1957)
Ranch Party, hosted by the laconic Tex Ritter and filmed in Compton, CA, featured some of the hottest country and rockabilly artists of the day, backed by the stellar house band (led by wizard of the strings Joe Maphis) and regulars The Collins Kids.  Guests include Bonnie Guitar, Sons of the Pioneers, Hank Penny, and features a great Collins Kids performance and an acrobatic duet with Joe Maphis and Little Larry Collins.

The Collins Kids Tearing It Up

Frontier Frolic (B+W, 1946)
The true “King of Western Swing” Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys host and play on this musical short with guests.  Some hot pickin’ with Bob and the boys plus guests The Modernaires, The McKinney Sisters and Pat Starling.  Includes a sing-along “San Antonio Rose”!

The King of Western Swing

Plus! Soundies of Jimmy Wakely, clips of Spade Cooley, Cowboy Copas, performance video clips culled from other episodes of “Ranch Party” including Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Patsy Cline, Bobby Helms, Merle Travis and more incredible double-neck guitar picking with Joe Maphis and the Collins Kids and more!

About Soundies:
Soundies can be considered the precursors to music videos. Produced during the years 1940 to 1946, Soundies were made to be seen on self-contained, coin-operated, 16mm rear projection machines called Panorams.  They were located in nightclubs, bars, restaurants and other public places.  Eight Soundies, featuring a variety of musical performances, were generally spliced together on a reel that ran in a continuous loop.  The Panoram, a complicated and unique machine, later served as the basis for the RCA 16mm projector.

Soundies were produced by various companies such as Minoco and RCM Productions, headed by FDR’s son James Roosevelt, Sam Coslow a song writer and Herbert Mills, a pioneer in the development of arcade music machines.  In order to achieve the widest possible distribution, Soundies covered the gamut of musical styles from country and western to Russian balalaika music, tenors singing Irish folksongs, the big band swing music of Stan Kenton and Tommy Dorsey and jazz Greats, Fats Waller, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole.

A Soundie reel sometimes included cheesecake segments–striptease, burlesque routines or shots of women in bathing suits–specifically intended to attract wartime military personnel on leave.  Appeals for war bonds and other patriotic messages (“We’re All Americans”, “When Hitler Kicks the Bucket”, “The White Cliffs of Dover”) were included.  Soundies often starred little known performers who later became famous, such as Alan Ladd, Cyd Charisse, Doris Day and Ricardo Montalban, as well as performers on their way down.  Many African-American performers like Dorothy Dandridge, Louis Armstrong and Stepin Fetchit, who were largely absent from mainstream films except in minor roles, were featured. -From the UCLA Film Library Web Site

Diggers on SF City Hall Steps

On Friday, February 18, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of  films focused on those lovable kooks, eccentrics and oddballs that make the world a bit more interesting.  Some may be geniuses, others are just a bit off- but they all are fascinating subjects.  Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.  Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to:  info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.
Highlights Include:

Nowsreal (Color, 1968)
A beautiful print of this super rarity filmed in and around San Francisco in the Spring of 1968, documenting in abstract fashion the “end” of the Digger movement- the loose collective of artists, radicals and free thinkers who were closely associated with and shared a number of members with a guerilla theater group the San Francisco Mime Troupe. They envisioned a society free from private property, and all forms of buying and selling (actor Peter Coyote was a founding member of the Diggers).

We moved the Diggers onto the City Hall steps and occupied them for three months, giving out food to city employees, washing our hair in the fountain, reading poetry on the steps. We made a film about that titled Nowsreal. We made a decision that the Diggers would end when the event ended on the summer solstice. On the last day, we put “San Francisco is Entering Into Eternity” on a theatre marquee. We held events in five different parts of the city, watched the sun go down, and asked each other: “What are we going to do now? – co-producer Peter Berg in conversation with Ron Chepesiuk from the book “Sixties Radicals, Then and Now”

Diggers Death of Money Parade an Haight St.

Chris Burden (Dir. Peter Kirby, Color, 1989)
One of the most intriguing, sensationalist performance artists of the 1970’s and thought-provoking installation artist of the 1980’s, this 30 minute documentary covers all his major events and installations up to 1989.  Burden, critics and friends are interviewed, revealing the ideas behind such infamous performances such as Shoot (Burden is shot with a .22 rifle), Transfixed (Burden is crucified atop a VW Bug) and installation pieces The Reason For The Neutron Bomb (50,000 nickels with match heads- each representing the number of Russian tanks along their eastern border) and Samson (a 100-ton jack that that slowly pushed against the load-bearing walls of the museum, activated by visitors entering via turnstile) and many more.

Shoot

High Wire (Color, 1984) Directed by Sandi Sissel. Philippe Petit (the recent subject of the doc “Man on Wire”) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his spectacular walk between the Twin Towers in New York City on August 7, 1974. Here he metaphorically bridges the ancient and modern as he walks a high wire suspended between the towers at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine and a sixteen story high-rise building across the street. With sound score by composer Phillip Glass.

Philippe Petit Relaxes

Further Reading:

The Diggers
http://www.diggers.org/overview.htm
http://winwingames.blogspot.com/2009/12/digger-games.html

Chris Burden
http://www.volny.cz/rhorvitz/burden.html

Philippe Petit
http://longliveirony.com/Petit.html

On Friday, February 11 Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of the strange, the bizarre, and the sometimes baffling short films, commercials and trailers from deep within the Oddball archive. These “found” films surface in the process of research for other programs: too good to languish on the shelves, they demand to be screened!  Weirdsville is a monthly companion program to the Strange Sinema series.  Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.  Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to:  info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Skater Dater (Dir. Noel Black, Color, 1965)
Directed by Noel Black (who went on to direct the cult feature “Pretty Poison”), Skater Dater has developed a strong following both for it’s amazing skateboarding and it’s surf-inspired Davie Allen and the Arrows soundtrack.  Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1966 and nominated for an Academy Award, this no-dialogue short comes off like a SoCal Quadrophenia, as the young protagonist falls for a cutie and struggles to break away from the crowd.  Features riders from the Imperial Skateboarding Club out of Torrance, CA.

Dating Do’s and Don’ts (1949, B+W) Long recognized as one of the campiest educational films ever made this fun how-do guide follows clueless Woody’s quest to ask fun girl Ann (pronounced here as “Ay-yun”) out on a date.

Birds, Bees and Storks (Dir. John Halas, Color, 1965)
A father sets out to explain the facts of life to his son, but becomes increasingly embarrassed to the point where his explanations are so vague as to be incomprehensible.

Inspired by Gerard Hoffnung’s 1960 book of the same name, this is a delightful and all too familiar study of the embarrassed middle-aged British male, as a father attempts to explain the facts of life to his son but ends up delivering a monologue so packed with euphemisms about birds, bees and butterflies that it ends up being totally incoherent.

Produced by the esteemed Halas & Batchelor Animation Studio, the visual style (inspired directly by Hoffnung’s drawings) is simple in the extreme – for much of the film, we just watch the father squirming and blushing in his chair, which focuses our attention both on Peter Sellers’ monologue and director John Halas’ subtle visual characterization, all nervous tics and fidgeting.

The Innocent Party (Color, 1959)
The guilt-tripped noir-like shocker about a “dirty” girl and her hidden secret- VD! See what happens when she “gifts’ her boyfriend with it!  A cool beatnik-jazz soundtrack highlights this sordid tale produced by the Kansas State Board of Health!

Lovemaking (Color, 1970) The famed experimental film by film pioneer Scott Bartlett. A delicate and arousing treatment of lovemaking. Its mode is simple and classical, combining technical mastery and personal restraint. The image is vivid subtle and ambiguous while the sound is sharp and clear. Bartlett’s films often form an interaction between film material and photographed image by combing complex analog film effects with film and video images to create a lush, colorful, and layered flow optical and auditory information. Bartlett’s “Lovemaking” is a imaginative, suggestive, artistic, non- clinical evocation of the sexual act.

VD Attack Plan (Technicolor, 1973) “Yes, it’s true. Walt D*sney Productions has made a significant contribution to the war against VD. “VD Attack Plan” – A fully animated Walt D*sney 16mm motion picture.” states the brochure accompanying this 16mm educational film. VD Attack Plan had some forward thinking and enlightening approaches (not just for D*sney but everyone else producing this type of film in 1973) to the subject of sexually transmitted diseases including promotion of condoms (instead of abstinence) and the fact that VD can be spread through same sex couplings.  This “war against disease “ film doesn’t miss a beat-even showcasing some of the graphic effects of the disease in action.  In brilliant Technicolor, just like you’d want it to be.

Mae West Meets Mr. Ed (B+W, 1964)
Mae West visits Wilbur to discuss building a luxury, pampering barn for her horses. Mr. Ed wants to join them- until he discovers he will have to cross-dress… Oh my gosh does it get wacky!

Buried Treasure (B+W, 1928)
The Granddaddy of pornographic cartoons, persistent rumors suggest that Max Fleischer (Betty Boop and others), Paul Terry (of TerryToons) and Budd Fisher (Mutt & Jeff) were responsible for this bawdy masterpiece.

PLUS- sexy movie trailers, naughty commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!

“Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.” – Will Rogers

“Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.” – Marshall McLuhan

“When you say Budweiser, you’ve said it all” – Lou Rawls

On Saturday, February 4, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare commercials and Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) from the “golden age” of television culled from the massive collection in the Oddball Films archive.  Spanning the late 1950’s to the early 1980’s, these weird, wild, wacky, funny, frightening and fabulous 30 second slices of vintage TV were designed to entice, dupe or otherwise coerce the American Consumer in the most entertaining fashion. Be a sell-out! Play spot the budding star or celebrity has-been! See the things you forgot you really needed!
Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.  Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Highlights May or May Not Include Some, All Or None of the Following (batteries not included, some assembly required, packaged by weight, not volume- some settling may occur):

Oily Bird Household Lubricant, Fruit of the Loom Panty Hose, Van Heusen Permanent Press Shirts, Volkswagen Beetle, Clairtone Color Television, Maypo Oat Cereal, Franco American Spaghetti, Scripto Pen, Stri-dex Medicated Pads, Summer Blonde, Band-Aids, Sucrets Antiseptic Throat Lozenges, Hunt’s Flavored Catsups, Mattel Power Shop, Mattel’s Stallion beach cruiser bike, Viceroy Filter Tip Cigarettes, Carters Laxative Pills, Baggies Sandwich Wraps, Schlitz Beer, Bosco, Vicks VapoRub, Hi-C, Coca Cola, Lavoris Mouth Wash, Schick Stainless Steel Razor Blades (featuring John Wayne), Fortical, Parker Pen, 1964 Chevy, L&M Cigarettes, Thunderbird Wine, Carters Pills, Brandon cigarettes, Dristan, Falstaff Beer, Lucky Lager, Post Crispy Critters, Grapenuts Cereal, TWA “Starstream”, Post Toasties:, Clairol, Bufferin, Marlboro, Post Sugar Crisp, Post Alpha Bits and much, much, much, more!

On Friday, January 28, Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of jazz film rarities- one-of-a-kind performances, unique soundtracks, kinescopes, Soundies and more of the great American art form. Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.  Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to:  info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Jammin’ The Blues (B+W, 1944)
Probably the most famous jazz film ever made- produced by jazz impresario Norman Granz, directed by Gjon Mili and featuring incredible performances by Lester “Prez” Young, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Illinois Jacquet, Barney Kessel, Marlowe Morris, John Simmons, George “Red” Callender, “Big” Sid Catlett and “Papa” Jo Jones.  Nominated for an Oscar in 1945 and entered into the National Film registry in 1955, this film simply must be seen by any serious jazz fan. Cinematography was by the later Hitchcock stalwart Robert Burks on his very first DP assignment.  There is a noir ambience to the film and each scene has a formal elegance that is enthralling. Mili has total command of his form (his only film as director!), and the mise-en-scene and continuity are impeccable.

The Interview (Color, 1960)
Animated short by the brilliant Ernie Pintoff has square interviewer befuddled by fictional hipster jazz musician Shorty Petterstein (voiced by Marin resident Henry Jacobs) as the Stan Getz combo blows and riffs “off camera”.  “Like, don’t hang me- I didn’t wanna fall up here in the first place!”

Glass (Color, 1958)
Brilliant Academy Award winning short juxtaposes traditional glass blowing with “modern” glass manufacturing. Made by Bert Haanstra (Netherlands), the wordless Glass is a near perfect film, perfectly balancing images and rhythm with the wonderful cool jazz soundtrack by the Pim Jacobs Quintet.

Red Hot Heat (Sizzling Rhythm With a Beat) (B+W/Colorization, 1937)
Adapted from the Warner Baxter/Joan Bennett film “Vogues of 1938”, this musical short features boogie woogie wildman Maurice Rocco in a sizzling version of  “Turn On That Red Hot Heat (Burn Your Blues Away)”.  Features the Cotton Club Singers and the Four Hot Shots dancers with a crazy colorized ending not seen in the original film.

Art Blakey Live in San Francisco (B+W, early 1960’s, Silent)
Criminally silent but riveting one-of –a-kind footage of the Art Blakey Quartet from about 1960 tearing it up in a nightclub date, rescued from a Western Addition basement.  Blakey’s music will be “synced” as best as possible.

Help, My Snowman’s Burning Down (Color, 1964)
Academy award-nominated (and Oddball Films favorite) short by Carson Davidson starring Bob Larkin (later in the cult film Putney Swope).  Beatnik lives outdoors on a boat dock off Manhattan with only bathroom furnishings and a typewriter.  Utilizes great stop motion and surreal effects, and the original coolly swinging music of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.

Keep It Cool (excerpt) (B+W, 1954)
The Red Norvo Trio performs a swinging “How Am I To Know” from the Universal musical featurette Keep It Cool. Features vibraphone legend Red Norvo, Guitarist Tal Farlow and bassist Red Mitchell.

A Date With Debbie (B+W Kinescope, 1960)
Rare kinescope clip from the Debbie Reynolds TV special featuring a smoking “This Here” by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (and an extremely campy intro dance by Debbie and friend).

Boogie Ride (B+W, 1942)
Cool Soundie featuring drum master Gene Krupa and original hep chick Anita O’Day along with Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge on trumpet.

Plus! More Soundies featuring Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and Fats Waller!

About Kinescopes:
The first method of recording television programs, a kinescope is a film made of a live television broadcast. Kinescopes are usually created by placing a motion picture camera in front of a television monitor and recording the image off the monitor’s screen while the program is being aired. This recording method came into wide use around 1947. Before videotape, this process was the standard industry method of creating a permanent document, for rebroadcast and for archival purposes.

About Soundies:
Soundies can be considered the precursors to music videos. Produced during the years 1940 to 1946, Soundies were made to be seen on self-contained, coin-operated, 16mm rear projection machines called Panorams.  They were located in nightclubs, bars, restaurants and other public places.  Eight Soundies, featuring a variety of musical performances, were generally spliced together on a reel that ran in a continuous loop.  The Panoram, a complicated and unique machine, later served as the basis for the RCA 16mm projector.

Soundies were produced by various companies such as Minoco and RCM Productions, headed by FDR’s son James Roosevelt, Sam Coslow a song writer and Herbert Mills, a pioneer in the development of arcade music machines.  In order to achieve the widest possible distribution, Soundies covered the gamut of musical styles from country and western to Russian balalaika music, tenors singing Irish folksongs, the big band swing music of Stan Kenton and Tommy Dorsey and jazz Greats, Fats Waller, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole.

A Soundie reel sometimes included cheesecake segments–striptease, burlesque routines or shots of women in bathing suits–specifically intended to attract wartime military personnel on leave.  Appeals for war bonds and other patriotic messages (“We’re All Americans”, “When Hitler Kicks the Bucket”, “The White Cliffs of Dover”) were included.  Soundies often starred little known performers who later became famous, such as Alan Ladd, Cyd Charisse, Doris Day and Ricardo Montalban, as well as performers on their way down.  Many African-American performers like Dorothy Dandridge, Louis Armstrong and Stepin Fetchit, who were largely absent from mainstream films except in minor roles, were featured. -From the UCLA Film Library Web Site

On Friday, January 21, Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of vintage films and clips shot in or around our beautiful city.  A love letter to the past, see how it really was (and occasionally still is)!  Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.  Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to:  info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

1939 Golden Gate International Exposition (Color, 1939, Silent)
Absolutely stunning color scenes from the World’s Fair held on Treasure Island.  The Golden Gate International Exposition celebrated the modern industrial west, best symbolized by the completion of two engineering marvels—the Golden Gate and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges.  The fair was staged on another feat of modern engineering, the manmade Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.  The exposition’s “Pacifica” modern style, developed largely by San Francisco architects, merged western architecture with an interpretation of the buildings of Asia and South America.

Highlights most of the major sights, including the incredible Cavalcade of the Golden West with casts of 300, horses, wagons, and costumed actors re-enacting historic events, Count Basie and Harry Owens performing in the Temple Compound, and the famed “Gay Way” featuring an uncensored look inside the “Artists Models Studio” and much more- the next best thing to being there!

Treasure Island Treasure

Trojan Horse (Prod. Ronald Bostwick/Robert Blasdell, Color, 1967)
Documents the creation of the amazing rolling sculpture designed by outsider artist Fredric Hobbs, unleashed on San Francisco during the Summer of Love.  Clad in an orange jump suit, Hobbs drives his creation all over our beautiful city from Haight Ashbury to North Beach, Lincoln Park to downtown, culminating in a final, ignominious act: the issuance of a parking ticket by one of San Francisco’s finest.

Arriving in San Francisco in the late 1950’s after studying in Madrid, artist Fredric Hobbs Goya-inspired paintings “were populated with demons performing sacrifices and contemporary witches’ Sabbaths… his grotesque figures gradually became translated into sculpture.  In the early 1960’s- inspired by the folk idols used in pagan rituals and primitive religious processions- Hobbs began adding wheels to his mutilated Everyman and deformed Earth Mothers and rolling them about the streets.  His most ambitious “parade sculpture” was The Trojan Horse, a horrendous tableau of mythological monsters that rose from Procrustean slags of plexiglass attached to a stripped-down auto chassis.  Wearing an orange jump suit, Hobbs drove the creation to Los Angeles, where it exhibited at several locations”.  (Thomas Albright- Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980).

Hobbs went on to make several insanely bizarre, Bay Area-based cult films in the early 1970’s, including Roseland, Alabama’s Ghost, and Godmonster of Indian Flats.

Hobbs and His Horse

San Francisco in Cinemascope (Color, 1961, Silent)
Another amazing document of our beautiful city by the bay- this time shot by a professional “amateur” in widescreen cinemascope.  Captures the city, the sights, the autos and the people going about their daily routine circa 1961- mesmerizing!  A recent (shortened) clip of this on youtube had friends and fans waxing eloquent- now see it on the “big” screen!

San Francisco Salad Days

1906 San Francisco Earthquake (B+W, 1906, Silent)
Footage of the city in ruins after the 1906 earthquake.  Shots of burned, collapsed, smoldering buildings, remaining walls falling down.  St. Patrick’s church destroyed in the Mission.  Meals cooked, served, and eaten in the streets, relief workers eating and drinking in front of the wreckage.  At the intersection of Market and Powell- wagons, horses, early autos, a very busy street and packed cable cars (fixed or still intact?).  Finally a sequence showing refugees on ferryboats shuttled over to Oakland.  They didn’t waste any time moving on and rebuilding!

The Big One

Plus! Rare shots of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge under construction, famed Pan American Airlines China Clipper Ship in action off Alameda (1935), a wild bicycle stunt- on top of the Palace of Fine Arts!! and more!

Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or info@oddballfilm.com
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Lost_Animation_6.pdf

On Friday, January 14, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rarely screened animated shorts- both classics and obscurities. Several of these shorts won or were nominated for international awards and all showcase inventive, wild imagination- from the simplest line drawings, to mid-century modern classics, obtuse international favorites, and countercultural landmarks.
Show time is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.  Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Films Include:

Flatland (Color, 1965)
Life in a two-dimensional world.  Narrated by Dudley Moore (as A Square) and members of the “Beyond The Fringe” theatrical group, this early adaptation of the beloved Edwin Abbott novel was produced at Harvard’s Visual Arts Center. The story continues to delight mathematicians, philosophers and computer theorists, and was recently adapted into a musical and the 2007 feature film of the same title.  Neither, however, had the wisdom of this film’s brevity, nor the genius of Dudley Moore!

The Trendsetter (Color, 1969)
Cool British animation from the great Vera Linnecar portrays a little man who is annoyed with the little hipsters who ape and one up his every move.  Illustrates how the trendsetters depend on others for their sense of self worth.

The Fly (Color, 1980)
Wonderful Academy Award-winning short from Hungary.  If you ever wanted to know what it would be like to be the “fly on the wall”, you’ll know after seeing this.

The Hangman (Color, 1964)
Moody animation set to the Ogden Nash poem about tolerance and complicity- shown in every grade school/junior high school in the country through the 1970’s.  Is it about the Holocaust, playground bullies, McCarthyism?  Discussion when the lights go up.

Walking (Color, 1968)
Animator Ryan Larkin uses an artist’s sensibility to illustrate the way people walk. He employs a variety of techniques–line drawing, color wash, etc.–to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot. The springing gait of youth, the mincing step of the high-heeled female, the doddering amble of the elderly–all are registered with humor and individuality, to the accompaniment of a particularly 1968 freak-folk soundtrack.

Both Sides Now (Color, 1972)
Pioneering computer animation from John Wilson, whose career started in the late 1940’s (winning Oscars for Gerald McBoing-Boing and Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom).  This short was the first computer generated music film and was produced for and aired on the Sonny and Cher TV show.  The song is Both Sides Now by the great Canadian chanteuse Joni Mitchell.

What On Earth! (Color, 1966)
“Martian documentary” by Canadian animators Les Drew and Kaz Pindal reports that there IS life on earth, but mistakes cars as the dominant life form- people are merely parasites that inhabit them. Nominated for an Academy Award.

Opening Speech (B+W, 1961)
Produced by and featuring the master pixilation animator Norman McLaren as he tries to master a recalcitrant microphone at the opening of the 1st Montreal International Film Festival.

Ego (Color, 1970)
Screened recently here as part of the Weirdsville series, this Brilliant animation by Italy’s Bruno Bozzetto (of the cult favorite Mr. Rossi series) demands a re-screening.  Opens with traditional comic strip-style animation until the factory-working family man goes to sleep and unleashes his subconscious thoughts, sending him into a battleground of situations.  Utilizes a number of animation styles including optical printing and pop art imagery.  Features a wild soundtrack by the ultra-lounge master Franco Godi…

Noises In The Night (Color, 1969)
Beautiful and sweet animation from (UPA founder) Stephen Bosustow Productions.  Little Sherri hears strange noises at bedtime and wakes up the entire household…night after night after night. Her parents attempt to persuade her that night noises are usually made by familiar things…or are they?

Curator Biography
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave.  A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro Theatre.

About Oddball Films

Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.  
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educationals, 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.

“Weirdsville 22”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, January 7, Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of the strange, the bizarre, and the sometimes baffling short films, commercials and trailers from deep within the Oddball archive. These “found” films surface in the process of research for other programs: too good to languish on the shelves, they demand to be screened!  Weirdsville is a monthly companion program to the Strange Sinema series.  Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00.  Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to:  info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Fraud By Mail (B+W, 1944)
This 1944 Universal Studios featurette focuses on bizarre and quite dangerous mail order fraud: nose shapers, spine straighteners, electrical hair stimulators, eye mallets, pendiculators and more.  Rather kinky.

Two (Color, 1971)
Spoof of overwrought Italian films written by and starring Reneé Taylor (nominated for an Oscar for Lovers and Other Strangers).  Two lovers on the beach try to out-passion each other, then out-debase themselves until the woman walks away in disgust.

The Wildest (B+W, 1958)
Filmed on the South Sore at Lake Tahoe, this super rare short features Louis Prima with Keely Smith and Sam Butera and the Witnesses.  A very loose plot serves to feature the high-energy band tearing through When You’re Smiling, Birth of the Blues, Listen to the Mockingbird and more.  Crazy lakeside capris pants twist action!

Porklips Now (Color, 1980)
Hilarious by some accounts, incredibly stupid by others, this spot-on low budget spoof of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” made just one year later features Billy Gray (of Father Knows Best fame) as Dullard, a young barbeque chef who is sent into Chinatown to end the career of Fred “Madman” Mertz, an insane butcher who’s cutting meat prices to pennies per pound.  Filmed in San Francisco!

The Day The Colors Went Away (Color, 1971)
Charming Polish stop-motion animation about a messy painter girl.  The colors in her paint box are fed up with her messy painting style and hit the road- taking all the world’s colors with them.  Stuck in a black and white world, the little girl sets out to find the colors (who have gathered in a rainbow) and re-paint the world.

Doubletalk (Color, 1975)
Hilarious short!  A boy picks up his date at her home and meets the parents- and we hear what everyone is really thinking over the niceties and conversation. Originally broadcast on Saturday Night Live, this forgotten gem plays like a distilled Meet The Parents and is also notable as the film debut of  Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager).

Signal Syntax (1980)
Ridiculous, bizarre low budget short about killer computers that violently do away with their owners.

PLUS- wild movie trailers, krazy commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!