Girl Trouble/Boy Trouble at Oddball Films April 16, 2010

Event: “Girl Trouble/Boy Trouble”.  Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of vintage educational and guidance films. Now’s your chance to finally see those secret films for girls and boys shown in grade school and junior high, finally desegregated by Oddball Films! Films about menstruation, vandalism, budding sexuality, dating and stranger danger will be shown, including About Dating, Growing Girls, Soapy The Germ Fighter, Boy With a Knife (featuring Richard Widmark), Naturally- A Girl, The Story of Menstruation, The Last Prom, The Snob, Hitchhiking and many more!
Date: Friday, April 16, 2010 at 8:00PM
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/Girl_Boy_Trouble_PR.pdf

"Girl Trouble/Boy Trouble”
Vintage Teen Guidance Films
Screen at Oddball Films

On Friday, April 16, Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of the strange, and bizarre world of vintage guidance films. Shown in grade school, junior high and high school auditoriums, these films were meant to educate, guide, and usually strike fear in impressionable youths. Some were shown to the all students, but many were girl or boy only- now is your chance to see what you missed!! 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:

Soapy the Germ Fighter (1951)
Young Billy Martin has to learn that being clean isn’t the same as being a sissy. One night, a giant, talking cake of soap wearing tights and a puffy-sleeved shirt assures him of this fact. This film, like many personal hygiene films, taught kids about germs and what to do to avoid them in case their parents neglected to do so.

Story of Menstruation (Color, 1946)
Classic telling of female puberty and the do’s and don’ts of menstruation – sponsored by Kotex.

The Last Prom (Color, 1963)
Pristine print of this all-time classic scare film. These hot-blooded teens live and drive too fast: sex=death. So good it was remade in 1980 (replacing the necking and bad driving with dui).

The Snob (B+W, 1958)
Why are some girls snobs? This film seeks to answer the question and to illustrate the effects such snobbery has on the perpetrator and those around them.

Boy With a Knife (B&W, 1956)
Narrated by film noir legend Richard Widmark, this educational film makes juvenile delinquency seem positively benign compared to today’s problem youth. Some great campy moments.
JDs

Naturally- A Girl (Color, 1971)
Uses vignettes, animation and comments by girls and boys to explore the medical facts and some personal feelings about menstruation.

Dating: Do’s and Don’ts (1949)
Classic teen dating guide- so very relevant today!

PLUS- many, many more twisted oldies- math class is cancelled, all Oddball Junior High students please report to the auditorium!!

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.