"Weirdsville 24" at Oddball Films March 11, 2011

Event: “Weirdsville 24”.  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. Highlights include: Mardi Gras (1984), the history, customs and traditions of the Fat Tuesday parade; Brooklyn Goes To New Orleans (1947), Brooklyn mug hams it up in the city during Mardi Gras; Lipstick and Dynamite (1949), wrassling she-babes square off; Skimpy (1931), starring the Tiffany Chimps- here’s one we missed for the “Monkey Time!” program; Stranger Than Fiction (1940), weird news from a weird time; Sniffy Escapes Poisoning (1965), totally twisted animation with dancing, singing, talking pills and cough syrup; The Reel News (1964), futuristic/custom cars, bikes and more; The Two-Legged Spaceship (1972), elementary school narcotics primer from the master- Sid Davis; Mystery in the Kitchen (1958), domestic bliss at your fingertips; Plus movie trailers, vintage commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, March 11, 2011 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_24_PR.pdf

Highlights Include:

Mardi Gras (Color, 1984)
The history, customs and traditions of Mardi Gras in the United States featuring lots of amazing historical footage- focused primarily on New Orleans but also the large Mobile, Alabama celebration.

Brooklyn Goes To New Orleans (B+W, 1957)
Comic travelogue of New Orleans during Mardi Gras featuring Brooklyn goon Arthur Cohen- who relates everything he sees to Brooklyn in a heavy New York accent.

Lipstick and Dynamite (B+W, 1949)
Furious femmes in an all-out she-brawl! Sensitive portrayal of a premier woman’s sporting event! Which is it? Come see and decide for yourself as Mildred Burke (from Los Angeles) and Mae Weston (of Columbus, Ohio) contend for the women's wrestling championship of the world.

Skimpy (B+W, 1931)
Before Lance Link - Secret Chimp hit the idiot box, the Tiffany Talking Chimps ruled the silver screen ! Here’s a rare short that we missed for the Monkey Time! program- featuring the Chimps at home around the breakfast table, off to school, then a crazy chimp band and tightrope walker…

Stranger Than Fiction (B+W, 1940)
Strange characters from a strange time- Arthur Sewell, a blind man, acts as a guide to Ft. McHenry (which inspired the US national anthem), a charcoal-burning bus developed in Japan, women bus conductors in Tokyo, a woman in Connecticut who uses discarded stockings to make tapestries, an architect who has designed a cinder-block house for himself with a roof with permanent water on it, a rubber tree that pumps water, and an obsessive model airplane maker.

Sniffy Escapes Poisoning (Color, 1965)
Absolutely twisted animation featuring a troll-like little boy with a massive head who drags his sick dog Sniffy to the medicine cabinet. Once opened, the pills and syrups begin to sing and dance as they cheerfully tell the little boy to KEEP HIS GRUBBY LITTLE PAWS OFF or risk a painful overdose and death.

The Reel News (B+W, 1964)
Shots of motorcycles, futuristic cars, some listed with owners and prices. English bike trials, Honda bike trials, people "popping wheelies" with small motorbikes, plus scenes from the Custom Car Show & National Motorcycle Show at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Retro-futurism meets gear head mania!

The Two-Legged Spaceship (Color, 1972)
Another cheap-o Sid Davis anti-drug film (he famously boasted that each of his films cost $1000 to make), this one squarely aimed (pun intended) at the elementary school set. Curious Mark gets a lesson about “Personal Pollution” from a friendly police officer.

Mystery in the Kitchen (Color, 1958)
Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, this film aimed at housewives uses satire and humor to teach proper nutrition and good eating habits. Awesome mid-century domestic scenes from our neighbors to the North.

PLUS- movie trailers, vintage 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.

Official Website: http://mim.io/70ebe