"Oddball's Greatest Hits 3" June 25, 2010

Event: “Oddball’s Greatest Hits 3”. Guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of the most popular short films recently screened here at the archive. There are always one or two films at each screening that stand out from the rest and demand a replay; tonight’s program will feature the cream of the crop and surprise hits culled from the last six months of screenings. Films include: the great Bergman spoof “De Düva”; the enchanting cut-out animation of “Mr. Frog Went A Courtin’”; Pat O’Neil’s mind-blowing experimental film “7362”, “Birds, Bees and Storks” with Peter Sellers; the noir-ish “Boy With A Knife”, narrated by Richard Widmark; dorky fun with “The Wizard of Speed and Time”; “The Innocent Party”, a beatnik-jazz VD scare film; the wonderful “Zoo” by the brilliant Bert Haanstra; the wickedly funny 1928 pornographic cartoon “Buried Treasure”; plus kooky vintage commercials and wild z-movie trailers!
Date: Friday, June 25, 2010 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Greatest_Hits3_PR.pdf
"Oddball’s Greatest Hits 3”
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, June 25, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of the most popular short films screened over the last six months here at the archive. A sampling of the best, most entertaining, and occasional surprise “hits” from the broad range of programs, from Lost Animation to Scared Straight, Girl Trouble/Boy Trouble to Weirdsville. Missed a program? Now’s your chance to see the best of show! Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Films Include:

De Düva (Dir. George Coe/Antony Lover, B+W, 1968) Weirdsville 10
Nominated for an Oscar (Best Short Subject - Live Action) in 1969, this short parodies three of Ingmar Bergman's films - Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, and The Silence. It also marked the first film role of Madeline Kahn. Speaking in mock Swedish, with English subtitles, a retired physicist with a hernia recalls, while sitting in an outhouse, a garden party he attended as a youth. In a game of badminton rather than chess, Death loses his intended victim because of a hilarious obstacle - a dirty pigeon. Director George Coe was one of the original cast members on the first three episodes of Saturday Night Live. And scriptwriter Sid Davis, who also plays the role of Death, is perhaps best known as a director/producer of educational safety films; he was also a long-time body double for John Wayne. (Tom Warner)
7362 (Dir. Pat O’Neill, Color, 1965-67) Weirdsville 11
A mind-blowing visual and sound experience by experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill with sound by cult musician/early synthesizer artist Joseph Byrd (The United States of America). Described as “a bilaterally symmetrical (west to east) fusion of human, biomorphic and mechanical shapes in motion. Has to do with the spontaneous generation of electrical energy. A fairly rare (ten years ago) demonstration of the Sabattier Effect (re-exposing partially developed film to light during the processing) in motion. Title refers to the film stock of the same name.

Birds, Bees and Storks (Dir. John Halas, Color, 1965) Weirdsville 13
A father sets out to explain the facts of life to his son, but becomes increasingly embarrassed to the point where his explanations are so vague as to be incomprehensible.

Inspired by Gerard Hoffnung's 1960 book of the same name, this is a delightful and all too familiar study of the embarrassed middle-aged British male, as a father attempts to explain the facts of life to his son but ends up delivering a monologue so packed with euphemisms about birds, bees and butterflies that it ends up being totally incoherent.

Produced by the esteemed Halas & Batchelor Animation Studio, the visual style (inspired directly by Hoffnung's drawings) is simple in the extreme - for much of the film, we just watch the father squirming and blushing in his chair, which focuses our attention both on Peter Sellers' monologue and director John Halas' subtle visual characterization, all nervous tics and fidgeting.
Boy With a Knife (B&W, 1956) Girl Trouble/Boy Trouble
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.

Mr. Frog Went A Courtin’ (Dir. Evelyn Lambert, Color, 1974) Lost Animation Fest
Another frequent collaborator with Norman McLaren, Evelyn Lambert forged a distinct whimsical style with dark undertones utilizing cutouts.

Zoo (B+W, 1962) Weirdsville 15
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 Innocent Party (Color, 1959) Scared Straight 3
The guilt-tripped noir-like shocker about a “dirty” girl and her hidden secret- VD! See what happens when she “gifts’ her boyfriend with it! A cool beatnik-jazz soundtrack highlights highlights this sordid tale produced by the Kansas State Board of Health!

The Wizard of Speed and Time (Color, 1979, Mike Jitlov) Time, Space, Movement
A young man in a green wizard costume runs throughout America at super speed, much like the superhero The Flash. Along the way, he gives a pretty girl a swift lift to another city, gives golden stars to other women who want a trip themselves and then slips on a banana-peel, and comically crashes into a film stage, which he then brings to life in magical ways.

Buried Treasure (B+W, 1928) Banned! Censored! Cartoons!
The Granddaddy of pornographic cartoons- ri”dick”ulously funny.

Plus! Some of our favorite vintage commercials and mind-bending movie trailers!!

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.