“Weirdsville 15” at Oddball Films June 11, 2010

Event: “Weirdsville 15: Oddities from the Archives”.  Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare, weird and some highly entertaining 16mm shorts, movie trailers and commercials culled from the 50,000+ archive at Oddball Films.  This month’s highlights include: Zoo (1962), hilarious look at zoos and the people who patronize them by the brilliant Bert Haanstra; The Remarkable Riderless Runaway Tricycle (1982), much-loved children’s tale- the American Red Balloon; Jerry’s Restaurant (1976), portrait of the inspiration for Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi; A Sharper Focus (1972), bizarre pop-art animated sales training; Magic Highway, U.S.A. (1958), stunning transportation retro-futurism; Crash Bang Boom (1969), pass the bong, I’m making an educational film!; The Moebius Flip, gives new meaning to the concept of a ski trip. Plus movie trailers, commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, June 11, 2010 at 8:30PM
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/Weirdsville_15_PR.pdf
"Weirdsville 15”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, June 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: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Zoo (B+W, 1962)
Hilarious docu-comedy by the brilliant Dutch filmmaker Bert Haanstra. Director of the 1959 Oscar-winning short Glass (another Oddball favorite!), Haanstra must have spent many days shooting to capture these amazing shots. Utilizing a hidden camera and brilliant editing , “natural” animal and human behavior/interaction is cleverly exposed.

"Observing people and animals when they don't know you're there is
fascinating: I bonded with them" – Bert Haanstra

The Remarkable Riderless Runaway Tricycle (Color, 1982)
Adapted from the popular children’s story, a young boy leaves his tricycle to play with a kite he retrieves from a trash can. It's trash day and the tricycle is mistakenly picked up by the trash men and taken to the junkyard. Just as it is about to be crushed into scrap metal, the tricycle magically speeds away… Music by Friday the 13th composer Harry Manfredini.

Jerry’s Restaurant (Color, 1976)
Most certainly the inspiration for Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi character, Chicago deli owner Jerry Myers throws in a side of verbal abuse with every sandwich. For over thirty years Jerry Meyers has screamed and yelled at customers who come into his deli. The film attempts to explain why people keep coming back for more.

A Sharper Focus (Color, 1972)
Training film for salespeople utilizes pop art animation and bizarre puppetry. Made by the pioneering, Oscar-nominated industrial filmmaker Henry Strauss.

Magic Highway, U.S.A. (Color, 1958)
Live action, archival footage, culminating in stunningly beautiful mid-century animation from D*sney examines the past, present (circa 1958) and paleo-future of transportation (*note* a small portion of the end of this wonderful otherwise unavailable film has been lost no doubt to a hungry high school film projector).

“As father chooses the route in advance on a push-button selector, electronics take over complete control. Progress can be accurately checked on a synchronized scanning map. With no driving responsibility, the family relaxes together. En route business conferences are conducted by television.”

Crash Bang Boom (Color, 1970)
Bizarre, catchy/annoying educational film introduces various percussion instruments to kids. Sing-songy jingle vocals provide the “narration”- culminating in a hippy freak band playing in a field while pre-teen Woodstock wannabees get groovy. Lysergic educational filmmaking at its “finest”.

The Moebius Flip (Color, 1969, excerpt)
A fantasy movie in which a group of skiers find that the world has flip-flopped onto the other side of reality. They have to do the moebius flip, a ski maneuver consisting of a flip plus a full twist, in order to flop the world back to reality. Made for the Hart Ski Company by Summit Films (Ski The Outer Limits), this is a visually stunning piece of retro style utilizing eye-popping optical print effects.

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

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.