275 Capp Street
San Francisco, California 94110

Event: “Strangest Strange Sinema”, a “Greatest Hits” evening of films screened at Oddball Films monthly “Strange Sinema” Screenings featuring our ever-popular “B-Movie Trailers and Box Office Boners”, the story of a drug-addicted tabby in “The Cat Who Drank and Used too Much” head lice in kids with “Lice Are Not Nice” the surreal world of Red Groom’s in an Academy Award Winning doc entitled “Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse’ and many new surprises.  
Date: Saturday, November 28, 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]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Strangest_Strange_Sinema.pdf
Greatest Hits-Stranger, Stranger Still!

"Strangest Strange Sinema”
Odddest Oddities From the Archives
Screens at Oddball Films
Saturday, November 28th Oddball Films presents  “ Strangest Strange Sinema”  a compilation of some of the “Greatest Hits” (as well as some surprises) from our monthly “Strange Sinema” screenings. For well over a year our  monthly “Strange Sinema “screenings have entertained and enlightened film viewers with their inexplicable and jaw-dropping content and visual strangeness. Tonight we resurrect our Oddest Hits featuring our ever-popular “B-Movie Trailers and Box Office Boners”, the story of a drug-addicted tabby in “The Cat Who Drank and Used too Much” head lice in kids with “Lice Are Not Nice” the surreal world of Red Groom’s in an Academy Award Winning doc entitled “Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse’ and many new surprises. Oddball Films is located at 275 Capp St. in San Francisco. 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 for (though some seem to have no purpose!) have long since outlasted their exhibition possibilities. These mundane, offbeat and even bizarre mystical, 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. These are films that will, in all likelihood never be screened in a theater again. Join us as we unearth and re-screen these filmic finds, some rare, some classic and some just plain bizarre films!
                                                                                         
B Movie Trailers and Box Office Boners Featuring “Girls in Trouble”, “Girly”, “The Student Body”, “Superchick”, “Superstooges and the Wonder Woman”, “Girls Are for Loving”, “1000 Convicts and A Woman”, “The Farmer’s Daughter”, “Obsession”, “Prime Cut”, “Mein Kampf”, Underworld USA and more! (From Strange Sinema #1)
                                                     
Houdini Never Died (Color, 1978)  A insightful documentary about child vaudevillian, trapeze artist and legendary magician Harry Houdini (1874-1926) narrated by Burgess Meredith. “Houdini..” includes rare archival footage of Houdini, famed magicians Doug Henning and Shimada. The film culminates with a escape from a straight jacket over Niagara Falls by famed Magician and Psychic Debunker James Randy. (From Strange Sinema #2)                       

The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much (Color, 1988) Had enough of drug scare films? Watch this wacky anti-drug film about a alcohol and drug using cat. (Yes, a cat!)  (From Strange Sinema #3)

You Asked For It! (B+W, 1957)
Watch Dr. Cole in this television kinescope demonstrate the science behind putting a red-hot metal poker on your tongue-painlessly! (From Strange Sinema #3)
                                                                              
Lice Are Not Nice (Color, 1985)
It’s head-scratching time as we witness the evolution of head lice in kids. All you ever wanted to know and more. Yuck! (From Strange Sinema #7)
                                                                                                        
How to Infiltrate the Establishment (Color, 1960s)
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?--The Graduate (1967)
In the 1960s radical culture a  “plastic” person was considered shallow and soulless. Not to be outdone by social  politics of its time the Plastics Education Foundation sponsored this mind-boggling display of  protest demonstrations and 60s rock bands,  cut up with stupifying surfers, NASCAR races and even spaceflight to give our youth a helping hand as they journey into the material world of petroleum based plastic industrial culture. A laugh riot! (From Strange Sinema #10)

Alexander Calder: From the Circus to the Moon (Color, 1963)
Produced by visionary experimental filmmaker Hans Richter this whimsical world of world-renowned sculptor Alexander Calder is on full display in this insightful look at his work. Utilizing materials unfamiliar in conventional sculpture at the time including wire, discs and cut-outs, a fresh vocabulary emerges for three-dimensional expressions, exuding a his own brand of quirky surreality that is the essence of whimsy. Calder (1898 –1976) was an internationally admired American sculptor and artist who is best known for making sculpture move. In the 1930’s, he combined engineering and art to invent the mobile, a kinetic abstract sculpture of metal pieces connected by wires or rods that are delicately balanced to float in space and move in response to surrounding air currents or the push of a finger. Calder also created wire sculptures, paintings and jewelry, illustrated books, designed sets for the grand dame of modern dance, Martha Graham and created one-off art covering airplanes, and racing cars. (From Strange Sinema #12)                           
 
Lili St Cyr in Bubble Bath Dance (B+W, 1950s)
Lili St Cyr was the most influential burlesque dancer in the second half of the 20th century. Her hip-swiveling ways swayed pop-culture sirens from Marilyn Monroe (who copied her style) to Madonna (who bought her famous push up bras) for decades to come.
St. Cyr shimmied across the country with inventive routines in posh nightclubs amassing legions of famous fans, including Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan. Her notoriety and fame brought financial and commercial successes, with roles in movies like Howard Hughes' Son of Sinbad and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead
(From Strange Sinema #12)

Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse (Color, 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 'Picto-Sculptoramas'. This film provides a playful and often surprising perspective on the artist and his 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. (From Strange Sinema #13)

Come to LA! (Color, 1970s)  
They say there is a war between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The only problem is they don’t know anything about it in Los Angeles. The city everyone loves to hate has more amusement parks than any other city in the country. “Who cares!”, you say. Well this lively and oftentimes idiotic promotional piece, complete with Shaft-like wah wah funk soundtrack made by the Greater Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau tells you things you never knew about LA like: “Did you know when you come to LA you can be relaxed and casual?  Where else can you have lunch outside everyday? And Beverly Hills- just think people actually live here!”
Wow, a promotional piece capitalizing on all the clichés we’ve known grown to hate! Don’t miss the opening and closing bikini scenes. Truly trashy. Welcome to LA-oh yea-be right there! (From Strange Sinema #15)

PLUS!
Surreal Personal Hygiene and Grooming Commercials and Stranger Than Fiction featuring trained birds, children walking like giants through a scale-model town, a parrot drinking beer in a bar, and a  liquor store with a fire hydrant for customer’s dogs to use!
 
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 and We Live in Public, 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, educational films, 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.
 

Added by chasgaudi on November 23, 2009