“The 30 Second Dream: Commercials From The Golden Age of TV” December 4, 2010

Event: “The 30 Second Dream: Commercials From The Golden Age of TV”.  Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare 16mm TV commercials and PSA’s from the 1950’s through the 1970’s, along with several vintage documentaries exploring/ exposing the television advertising industry and consumerism. The documentaries include “The 30 Second Dream” (1977), “Buy(Buy)?” (1971), and “TV Ads: Our Mini Myths” (1977). Plus a hundred or so of the wildest, weirdest commercials, both familiar and obscure from “the golden age of TV”, culled from Oddball’s 5000+ commercial collection!
Date: Saturday, December 4, 2010 at 8:30PM
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/30_Second_Dream_PR.pdf

"The 30 Second Dream”
Commercials From The Golden Age of TV
Screens at Oddball Films

“Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.” – Will Rogers

“Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.” – Marshall McLuhan

“Schaefer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one.” – Schaefer Brewing Co.

On Saturday, December 4, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare commercials and Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) from the “golden age” of television culled from the massive collection in the Oddball Films archive. Spanning the 1950’s to about 1980, these weird, wild, wacky, funny, frightening and fabulous 30 second slices of vintage TV were designed to entice, dupe or otherwise coerce the American Consumer in the most entertaining fashion. In addition, several short documentaries on the subject will be screened.
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:

The 30 Second Dream (Color, 1977)
Award winning mini documentary on the seductive power of TV ads. Juxtaposes carefully selected commercials to reveal how they exploit our fears, hopes and fantasies.

Buy (Buy) (Color, 1973)
Explores the directors who make TV commercials, the agencies behind them, and shows several ads being made. See the geniuses and cretins behind this great American art form. See the director who couldn’t be bothered to put his shoes on for an interview!

TV Ads: Our Mini Myths (Color, 1977)
Compilation of Clio Award (the Academy Awards of Advertising) winning ads from 1966-1977. Among many great ads is the mind-blowing Levi’s commercial, entitled “The Stranger”, made by local designer Chris Blum and featuring the voice of “Word Jazz” genius Ken Nordine.

PLUS: A Hundred or so of rare and amazing 16mm TV ads- beer, cars, hair products, underwear, junk food and much, much more!!

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.

Official Website: http://mim.io/b26a7