Weirdsville: More Oddities From The Archives October 10, 2009

Event: “Weirdsville: Oddities from the Archives”. Guest 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: “I Remember Barbra”, 1980 Brooklynites gush over Ms. Streisand; “Bate’s Car”, English eccentric converts his car to run on manure; “About Rubber”, everything you ever wanted to know about rubber… but were afraid to ask; “Match Your Mood”, wild psychedelic/pop art 60s refrigerator covers; “Turned On”, fodder for adrenaline junkies; “Fraud By Mail”, fetishy quack mail-order products; and another episode of “Hot Dog”, How Do They Make Tennis Balls?; plus movie trailers and commercials straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]

"Weirdsville”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Saturday, October 10, Guest 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:

I Remember Barbra (Color, 1980)
Barbra Streisand retrospective by filmmaker Kevin Burns, who takes to the streets, shops, boardwalks, apartment houses and classrooms of Brooklyn to document the Barbra Streisand her friends and neighbors remembered as an adolescent and up and coming performer. No clips of Barbra are used in the film, nor is her music. Instead, the documentary focuses on everyday Brooklynites and their personal recollections of a favorite hometown girl. A bizarre and amusing slice of Brooklyn circa 1980.

Bate’s Car (Color, 1974)
A portrait of a loveable eccentric, this short film presents Mr. Bate, an inventor who discovers a substitute for gasoline in barnyard manure. Even though he fits the classic mould of single-minded know-how and practical dreamer, his discovery is tried and tested. He demonstrates how his homemade digester does turn manure into potent methane gas that powers his auto. And for good measure, he demonstrates his latest sustainable invention – a bicycle powered by the bumps on the road.

About Rubber (Color, 1971)
Engaging documentary about rubber harvesting and production with a unique moog soundtrack. From humble, hands-on harvesting to the Folsom Street Fair: who knew?

Match Your Mood (Color, 1968)
Wild, amazing promotional film by Westinghouse touts the latest fad: decorative pop art/psychedelic refrigerator covers. Transforms any kitchen into a swinging go-go party!!

Turned On (Color, late 1960s)
More swinging excitement, probably trying to keep the kids off drugs and into far more dangerous thrills: fast cars, heavy surf, extreme skiing and more. Wild “Wipeout” soundtrack!

Fraud By Mail (B+W, 1944)
Speaking of fetish, 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.

Hot Dog: How Do They Make Tennis Balls? (Color, 1971)
From the Saturday morning mini-documentary program- tennis ball manufacturing from their crude rubber beginnings to the sophisticated fuzzy covers, facilitated by teams of factory women. With our pals Jonathan Winters, Jo Anne Worley and Woody Allen.

PLUS- Movie trailers and commercials 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.

Upcoming Programs
Fri Oct 9 - India Films: Photo Wallahs
Sat Oct 10 – Weirdsville 7 (Oddities from the Archives)
Fri Oct 16 – Crazy Cats 2: The Cat Came Back (Cat films- all new program)
Sat Oct 17 - Home Movie Day, Strange Sinema- “World’s Strangest Home Movies”
Fri Oct 23 - Sonic Oddities Live
Sat Oct 24 – Scared Straight (Drug/Alcohol Scare Films)
Fri Oct 30 - Rock n’ Roll at the Movies
Sat Oct 31st Terror Noir- The House on Telegraph Hill in SF + Halloween Wet Dream

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.