"Weirdsville 18- the 1970s" at Oddball Films September 3, 2010

Event: “Weirdsville 18: Oddities from the Archives – the 1970s”.  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 we revisit the long-haired, bad teeth, polyestered 1970s- highlights include: Television Behind The Scenes (1978), see how they produce the Donny and Marie Show; (1979), Information Processing (1971), science experiment at a loud Hollywood cocktail party; Big Mouth Goes To The Dentist (1979), giant mouth on legs visits the dentist to show kids it’s no big deal; Leisure (1976), Oscar-winning pop art animation about our pursuit of leisure; Six Filmmakers in Search of a Wedding (1971), six film approaches to six weddings, all extreme 1970s fashion; Not You, Too?! (1973), hippy consumer fraud; Teenage Father (excerpt, 1978), great 1970s teen car cruising. Plus 1970s movie trailers, commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, September 3, 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_18_PR.pdf
"Weirdsville 18”
Oddities From The Archives – the 1970s
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, September 3, 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! This month we revisit the awful 1970s! 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:

Television Behind The Scenes (Color, 1978)
Focusing on the Donny and Marie show, depicts how a weekly variety television program is produced. Includes comments by the producer, director, head writer, art director, and performers who explain the complex interrelationship of the various people involved in the production of this weekly variety show masterpiece.

Information Processing (Color, 1971)
Narrated by comedian David Steinberg, featuring a who’s who of mostly yet unknown 1970s TV stars as subjects (including Uschi Digard from Super Vixens and a thousand other soft-porn movies) and using for its base a crowded, noisy Hollywood cocktail party, this film analyzes how people process information. Deals with attention, language processing, long and short term memory, mnemonics, retrieval strategies, and problem solving. See if you can recognize the half dozen or so “stars” in waiting!

Big Mouth Goes To The Dentist (Color, 1979)
Children become familiar with the sights and sounds of the dentist's office when 'Big Mouth' is encouraged to visit his playmate's friend - Dr. Jules. Designed to gain the cooperation of children, the film covers the dental examination, cleaning, flouride treatment, X-rays, brushing habits, and regular visits, and provides a positive role model for children.

Leisure (Color, 1976)
Oscar-winning, fast-paced, humorous and thought-provoking film using animation by Australian newspaper cartoonist Bruce Petty. Utilizing a pop-art sensibility, the film emphasizes the use of leisure time as an important aspect of life in our society today, tracing its history and possible future.

Six Filmmakers in Search of a Wedding (Color, 1971)
Six rapid-fire shorts covering the same wedding - some naturalistic and gentle and others more comedic and satirical (one is done in pixilation with background music by famed Canadian animator Derek Lamb; another is crudely animated with photos and drawings moved across stationary backgrounds). Interesting fashions, very Seventies.

Not You, Too?! (Color, 1973)
Anti-fraud educational film teaches how to avoid typical scenarios like paying to have a studio record your stupid hippy song (convincing you it’s a sure fire hit).

Teenage Father (excerpt) (Color, 1978)
Oscar-winner Taylor Hackford’s (An Officer and a Gentleman) unknown, thought-provoking film about a young parent- notable here for the slice of life 1970s teen suburban cruising scenes at the opening, in which we will revel and marvel at.

PLUS- 1970s 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.

Official Website: http://mim.io/29075