"Bon Voyage! - Vintage Travelogues" April 24, 2010

Event: “Bon Voyage! - Vintage Travelogues”.  Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of vintage travelogue films. Let Oddball take you to exotic, faraway places lost in time, by modern, glamorous airplane. Early travelogues in shimmering black and white, 1950s travel in stunning Kodachrome color, and swinging sixties go-go holidays! Highlights include Pan Am’s World, Tempo Twelve, Rhumba Holiday, Polynesian Holiday, Tempo Twelve (with Arte Johnson), New Horizons: Fiji & New Caldonia, Down Jamaica Way, Brooklyn Goes To Paris, Belles of the South Seas, plus the 3 Stooges in Some More of Somoa and more!
Date: Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 10:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Bon_Voyage_PR.pdf

"Bon Voyage!”
Vintage Travelogues
Screen at Oddball Films

On Saturday, April 24, Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of vintage travelogues guaranteed to take you to far away places. Pack your bags and get ready for some sun and fun, deep cultural connections, and plenty of hula and limbo dancing!
Showtime is 8:00PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Pan Am’s World (Color, 1966)
Nicely produced promotional film from Pan Am showing destination highlights and in-flight service in perhaps the last era of glamorous air travel.

Tempo Twelve (Color, 1964)
Delta Airlines promotional film with pre-Laugh In Arte Johnson as a comic jetsetter. 12 different swinging locations are highlighted, including SF, LA, Vegas, Dallas(?) Jamaica, Puerto Rico, New Orleans and Washington DC. Remember when jet travel was this glamorous? Neither do we.

Polynesian Holiday (Color, 1955)
Filmed in stunning Kodachrome color, this rare short travelogue stars bandleader Harry Owens in a tongue-in-cheek island vacation, where he’s fanned and feted by beautiful native women. Harry established the “hapa haole” style of Hawaiian music (native music as interpreted by foreigners) and won an Oscar for his song “Sweet Leilani”.

Hawaii: State of Paradise (B+W, 1951)
Nice early 50’s tourism short on the yet-to-be-fully exploited/spoiled Waikiki. Great surfing shots and some Tiki/Luau action.

Rhumba Holiday (B+W, 1947)
"Are you tired of wars and atomic bombs . . . ?" The answer is a family trip to Cuba. In Havana, the Presidential Palace and a message of welcome by President San Martin. Palm trees, the Morro Castle, fruit, Rio Cristal Gardens and swimming there. The film ends with a hint of the nightlife at the end of the day.

Brooklyn Goes To Paris (B+W, 1956)
A comic tour by Brooklyn native Arthur Cohen who appears in the film as well and narrates in strong Brooklynese. Everything is related to Brooklyn or the New York area. He covers (and mispronounces) the Louvre, Champs Elysee, the airport, Place de l'Opera, Rue de la Paix, l'Etoile, Montmartre (and its artists), Place Pigalle, Moulin Rouge, an aerial view of Paris, Notre Dame cathedral, the Seine, the Left Bank (and its painters), the Eiffel Tower, the University of Paris, nightclubs.

Down Jamaica Way (Color, 1960)
Sponsored by BOAC Airlines, nice color and Limbo dancers!

Fun In Florida (B+W, 1947)
City gates of St. Augustine. Castle San Marco, King's Treasury, winter quarters of the circus. Bathing-beauty contest on Miami Beach and slow motion diving.

Belles of the South Seas (B+W, 1946)
Exploitation film masquerading as an educational, anthropological overview of South Seas tribal culture.

Some More of Samoa (B+W, 1941)
Starring the 3 Stooges, a sensitive portrayal of island tribal culture. Acting as tree surgeons, the trio head to the island of Rhum Boogie in search of a rare specimen-and find Cannibals, angry alligators and plenty of hi-jinx!

PLUS- vintage travel and airline commercials!

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.