Strange Sinema: Oddities From The Archives May 23, 2009

Event: Strange Sinema: Oddities from the Oddball Archives featuring new finds, buried junk and avant garde gems featuring films such as The Movie Palaces (1987), depicting the history of the great movie theaters, the brilliant animator Bill Plympton’s The Face, a 1958 profile of culture and geography Himalaya-Life on the Roof of the World, John Whitney ‘s Arabesque, the 1975 seminal computer film utilizing Arabic architectural forms, Pop Art Picto-Sculptoramas” in the Academy-Award winning film Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse, dumbo teenage stoners in Pill Poppers and swingin’ 70s commercials like Sexy Socks!
Date: Saturday, May 23, at 8:30PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Cap Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
"Strange Sinema”
Oddities From the Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

Saturday, May 23 we present “Strange Sinema: Mind Altering Oddities from the Archives”, a collection of films from our unarchived collection. Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.
Deep in the stacks of Oddball Films’ 50,000 film collection lie hundreds of unviewed and undiscovered curiosities that have never seen the light of a projection lamp. In many cases the purpose they were made (though some seem to have no purpose!) has long since outlasted their exhibition possibilities.
These mundane, offbeat and even bizarre medical, mental hygiene, adult, music, movie trailers, home movies and commercial throw-aways were collected and archived by curator Stephen Parr in his quest to make the world a stranger cinematic place. As historical detritus they provide valuable insight into the rich variety of sub-cinema culture that lies beneath the surface of conventional feature film fare.
Some of these are films that will, in all likelihood never be screened anywhere again. Join us as we unearth and re-screen these filmic finds never to reappear on dvd or any other format again. Tonight we present some truly remarkable oddities from around the world!

Featuring:

The Movie Palaces (1987)
Narrated and hosted by actor Gene Kelly and produced by the Smithsonian Institute this film documents the history of the great movie palaces of the 20th century. Movie Palaces features magnificent footage of movie premieres, and classic interiors as well as footage of Loews, Paramount, Fox and some of the great themed theaters in the United States.

Your Face (1987)
This film set the style and started the career of famed animator Bill Plympton. One of the most popular short films ever made, it’s still showing all over the world. As a second-rate crooner sings about the beauties of his lover’s face, his own face metamorphosis's into the most surreal shapes and contortions imaginable.
The music was written and sung by Maureen McElheron, then slowed to sound like a man’s voice because Plympton was too cheap to hire a male singer. Your Face earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short in 1988.

Himalaya - Life on the Roof of the World (1958)
This film, shot in 1958 presents a comprehensive and comparative treatment of the world's highest mountains which serve as a meeting place of trade and cultures, placed in perspective with their importance of the geography and economy of Asia. It relates the importance of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet to the geography, economy, and culture of Asia.
Arabesque (1975)
John Whitney ‘s Arabesque, is considered by many to be the seminal computer film. Set to the music of Manoochelher Sadeghi, and created during a residency at IBM Whitney balanced science with aesthetics as he experimented with the eccentricities of Islamic architecture creating whirling, exotic flows of computer generated images. Arabesque was one of the first computer generated films that married technology and art is a focused, cinematic manner. Working with his early home-made computerized motion-control set-up, Whitney could produce a variety of innovative designs and metamorphoses of text and still images, which proved very successful in advertising and titling of commercial projects. He also did various commercial assignments including the title design for Hitchcock's feature Vertigo (in association with Saul Bass), and the preparation (in association with Charles Eames) of a seven-screen presentation for the Buckminster Fuller Dome in Moscow.

Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse (1987)
A colorful look at the life and work of an innovative artist, Red Grooms, as he sketches people, and conducts a tour through the two-and three-dimensional walk-in works he calls 'Sculpto- Pictoramas'. "This film provides a playful and often surprising perspective on the artist and inspirational sources, brilliantly reflecting the humor and humanism prevalent in his work. Winner of the Academy Award for best short film.
Grooms was best known as a multimedia artist creating colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Grooms made a number of "Happenings". The best known was "The Burning Building," staged at his studio in New York's Lower East Side in December 1959. Shortly thereafter, Grooms invented "sculpto-pictoramas" These vibrant three-dimensional constructions melded painting and sculpture, to create immersive works of art that invited interaction from the viewer. The pieces were often populated with colorful, cartoon-like characters, from varied walks of life. Grooms's two most notable installations—The City of Chicago (1967) and Ruckus Manhattan (1975)—were enormously popular with the public. These works were executed in collaboration with then-wife, the artist Mimi Gross. Along with Gross, he starred in San Francisco cult filmmaker Mike Kuchar's Secret of Wendel Samson (1966), which tells the comic story of a closeted gay artist torn between two relationships.

Pill Poppers (1971)
Produced by the king of the Social Guidance films Sid Davis and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union(!)
this howler shows you all the ways to intoxicate yourself! Watch a dumb teenage stoner bowl a gutter bowl as his pill popping ways get the best of him.
Plus! Sexy Socks and very strange unadvertised shorts!