"Weirdsville 14" at Oddball Films May 14, 2010

Event: “Weirdsville 14: Oddities from the Archives”.  Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare, weird and some highly entertaining 16mm shorts, movie trailers and commercials culled from the 50,000+ archive at Oddball Films.  This month’s highlights include: Religion: Making The Scene (1971), Jesus freaks, hare Krishna’s, the funky Rev. Cecil Williams and other alternative spiritualities; America: Tinsel Mecca (1963), beautiful color portrait of the Hollywood scene when it was really swinging; Screentest (1975), from the fertile mind of Frank Mouris, brilliant director of Frank Film; The Beats Go On: Percussion From Pleistocene To Paradiddle (1971), all about drums featuring jazz/session legend Shelly Manne; From Spruce To Bomber (1944), making the lightweight WWII “Mosquito” bomber; The 'Possum That Didn't (1972), biting Frank Tashlin animation; Plus movie trailers, commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, May 14, 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/Weirdsville_14_PR.pdf
"Weirdsville”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, May 14, Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of the strange, the bizarre, and the sometimes baffling short films, commercials and trailers from deep within the Oddball archive. These “found” films surface in the process of research for other programs: too good to languish on the shelves, they demand to be screened! Weirdsville is a monthly companion program to the Strange Sinema series. 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:

Religion: Making The Scene (Color, 1971)
Explores the various spirituality alternatives floating around during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the loss of influence by traditional American churches, and examines the search for religious forms that bring ecstasy. Includes sequences of "Jesus people," aka hippies, Hare Krishna disciples, a yoga institute, an interview with a former Catholic priest who left the church to marry, and the freeform, hip, joyful Glide Memorial church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district helmed by the funky Rev. Cecil Williams- still going strong today.

America! The Tinsel Mecca (Color, 1963)
Watch this eye-popping parade of Americana as we travel by helicopter through Southern California’s “Muscle Beach”, “The House of Magic” and everything 1960s Los Angeles has to offer including a gold Rolls Royce, female pole dancers and a Folk-singing Hootenanny at the world-famous Troubadour nightclub! Don’t miss Valentino’s gravesite too! The only episode of this un-sold TV pilot is in fabulous, non-fade Kodachrome color.

Screentest (Color, 1975, Dir. Frank and Caroline Mouris)

"A brilliant film, almost beyond description...existences led at twice the speed, and images/identities transformed without notice." - Roger Ebert.

A kaleidoscopic documentary of nine queer actors as they give free rein to their fantasies. They dress up, strip down, cross-dress; paint their faces, paint their nails, paint the set and generally camp it up while, on the densely layered soundtrack, they dish each other's performances, the film as a whole, and film documentaries in general.

In a documentary about a male amateur theatrical troupe that create their own costumes, sets, makeup, and roles the filmmaker uses various innovative techniques to juxtapose the images of the actors as they don their masks and disguises, creating a world of unreality. The antics of the actors are full of outside reference--jokes about everything from Magritte to Jessie Royce Landis's famous bit in To catch a thief when she extinguishes her cigarette in a fried egg. The sound track is an edited version of the cast's informal comments as they watch the rushes of the film.

The Beats Go On: Percussion From Pleistocene To Paradiddle (Color, 1971)
Educational short about from a music series focused on percussion and featuring the amazing West Coast jazz drummer/session genius Mr. Shelly Manne.

From Spruce To Bomber (B+W, 1944)
Propaganda film documenting the manufacture of lightweight “Mosquito” fighter bombers made from Spruce trees. Initially dismissed, these innovative beauties made many successful bombing runs into the heart of Germany.
The 'Possum That Didn't (Color, 1972)
Animated version of the obscure 1950 Frank Tashlin book about a group of busybodies who find a possum and try to make him smile (he is smiling, just hanging upside down). They take him to all the hotspots in the city… Tashlin directed many early cartoons and the cult favorite “The Girl Can’t Help It” (and a slew of Jerry Lewis pictures).

PLUS- movie trailers, commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!

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.