“Weirdsville 21: Oddities from the Archives” December 11, 2010

Event: “Weirdsville 21: 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.  Highlights include: The Fur Coat Club (1973), two girls and their fur-raising adventure!; King of the Carnival (1947), behind the scenes of a large traveling carnival; Ego (1969), brilliant dreamscape animation by Bruno Bozzetto; Comput-her Baby (1968), early computer love; Nudism- A Way of Life? (c.1950), frank and beans look at the cult of nudism; Color For Joy (1962), promotional film made by the RIT Fabric Dye Co. encourages you to dye everything in your house; Plus, wild movie trailers, krazy commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Saturday, December 11, 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_21_PR.pdf
"Weirdsville 21”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Saturday, December 11, 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:

The Fur Coat Club (Color, 1973)
Early short by Joan Micklin Silver (Crossing Delancy), depicts the adventures of two nine-year-old girls who have invented a secret game of touching fur coats without the wearer realizing it. Follows them as they inadvertently become trapped in the vault of a fur store, where to their surprise when the vault door opens, two thieves appear and the girls manage to trap them and become heroines. Great fetish primer.

King of the Carnival (B+W, 1947)
Nice black and white print of this amazing behind the scenes look at a traveling carnival- filmed at the 1946 Kansas Free Fair in Topeka. Focused on Carl Sedlmayr, owner of the Royal American Shows (home of the largest midway), all aspects of the fair are shown, including rides, freak shows, live bands and more. They don’t do ‘em like this anymore!

Ego (Color, 1970)
Brilliant animation by Italy’s Bruno Bozzetto (of the cult favorite Mr. Rossi series)- starts with traditional comic-style animation until the factory-working family man goes to sleep and unleashes his subconscious thoughts sending him into a battleground of situations. Utilizes a number of animation styles including optical printing and pop art imagery. Wild soundtrack by the ultra-lounge master Franco Godi…

Comput-Her Baby (Color, 1968)
An early ode to computers and computer dating. Sweet and strangely prescient.

Nudism: A Way of Life? (B+W, c.1950)
An unbiased and unabashed exploration of the nudism movement which first gained popularity in Germany in the early 20th Century.

Color For Joy (Color, 1962)
Housewife dances and prances around the house, dyeing everything in sight with RIT fabric dye in this odd promotional film. Stars Patricia Harty, who played Blondie in the late 1960s sitcom, in perhaps her first “dramatic” role. Makes a nice companion piece to Oddball favorite Match My Mood. No housewife has ever been this peppy- not without a handful of leapers!

PLUS- wild movie trailers, krazy 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/ed3f7