"Weirdsville 16" at Oddball Films July 9, 2010

Event: “Weirdsville 16: 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: The Wild Goose (1973), The Great Escape- nursing home version!; Hypothèse Beta (1967), animated rebel punch hole on a computer punch card; In A Harem (1944), twisted dogs dressed as humans and “talking” in a lusty harem; New York City! (1968), swingin’ sixties United Airlines promo film with garage rockers The Churls; The Concert (1975), clever/ridiculous crosswalk/keyboard symphony; What Made Sammy Speed? (1957), Sid Davis scare film in glorious Eastman color; The House I Live In (1945), Oscar-winning anti-prejudice film with Frank Sinatra with rare “Sinatra-mania” footage of teen fan crazies. Plus movie trailers, commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, July 9, 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_16_PR.pdf
"Weirdsville 16”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, July 9, 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:

The Wild Goose (B+W, 1973, Dir. Bruce Cronin)
An endless round of octogenarian birthday parties, insipid poetry readings, boring meals and confrontations with no-nonsense nurses make the "wild goose" determined to escape from his nursing home, wreaking havoc in his motorized wheelchair in this hilarious fantasy filled with sight-gags and in which no dialogue is necessary. Winner of a Baltimore Film Festival award, 1975, and still used as a nursing home training film!!

Hypothèse Beta (Color, 1967)
An Oscar-nominated French filmed animation, which deals with an isolated computer punch card perforation who tries to join groups of well-behaved perforations, is rebuffed, and finally manages to create complete disorder. Remember punch cards? Neither do I.

In A Harem (B+W, 1941)
An all-dog, "talking" short from Paramount's "Speaking of Animals" series. A little pooch falls asleep and dreams he has his own exotic harem.

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!

The Concert (Color, 1975)
A comedic fantasy about a man who suddenly discovers that his feet produce piano notes as he walks across the street.

What Made Sammy Speed? (Color, 1957)
Another great Sid Davis production (hero of the Scared Straight series), this one in stunning Eastman color with great southern California street scenes and 1950s cars. A teen-age driver, Sammy Robertson, is killed in a traffic accident as a result of speed. This film explains the steps leading up to the accident: background, attitude, and reasons for poor driving.

The House I Live In (B+W, 1946, Dir. Mervyn LeRoy)
Made to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice at the end of World War II, it received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.
Features a young Frank Sinatra teaching a group of boys a lesson in religious tolerance and singing the title song, which compares America to a house we all inhabit. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, the established hand behind such hits as Little Caesar (1931), Random Harvest (1942) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). It won a Special Oscar® for Best Tolerance Short Subject and a Golden Globe as Best Film for Promoting International Good Will. Way to go, Frank. (Also features rare Sinatra-mania street scene footage!)

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.