Weirdsville 8 at Oddball Films November 13, 2009

Event: “Weirdsville: Oddities from the Archives”. Guest 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: “Tempo Twelve”, a swing sixties travelogue; “Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman”, pioneering stop motion animation of insects; “Doubletalk”, what people really think in everyday conversation; “I Was A Thanksgiving Turkey”; “Mondo Cane”, excerpts from the cult classic; “The Baby Sitter”, a bizarre Little Lulu cartoon; another episode of “Hot Dog”; plus movie trailers and commercials straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, November 13, 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.flarerecord.com/?p=389
"Weirdsville”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, November 13, Guest 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:

Tempo Twelve (Color, 1964)
Delta Airlines promotional film with pre-Laugh In Arte Johnson as a comic jetsetter. 12 different swinging locations are highlighted, including SF, LA, Vegas, Dallas(?) Jamaica, Puerto Rico, New Orleans and Washington DC. Remember when jet travel was this glamorous? Neither do we.

Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman (B+W, hand tinted, 1912)
Wildly inventive landmark of early cinema and stop motion animation, insects star in this Kafkaesque love triangle. Polish director Ladislas Starévich, working in Russia, started out as an entomologist when he tried to replicate a bug battle he had witnessed. His experiment was so successful and satisfying that he continued with animation. A must see!!

Doubletalk (Color, 1975)
Hilarious short! A boy picks up his date at her home and meets the parents- and we hear what everyone is really thinking over the niceties and conversation. Originally broadcast on Saturday Night Live, this forgotten gem plays like a distilled Meet The Parents and is also notable as the film debut of Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager).

I Was A Thanksgiving Turkey (Color, 1986)
Thanksgiving from the turkey’s point of view- roasted, carved and devoured.

Mondo Cane Excerpts (Color, 1962)
Several excerpts from the first Mondo Cane film that became a cult sensation, documenting strange rituals around the world. First scene is painter Yves Klein and his “human brushes”- nude women dipped in blue paint which he uses on a large canvas, while a live symphony plays!! Next is the Western culture-clash ritual of old folks learning to hula in Waikiki. Then the most (in)famous sequence- Cargo Cults- primitive tribes that worshipped airplanes as gods…

The Babysitter (Color, 1947)
Bizarre Little Lulu cartoon- Lulu is taking care of a very naughty baby who won’t stay in his crib. When Lulu hits her head while chasing him, she dreams a visit to the fabled Stork Club night spot- where all the famous Hollywood guests and musicians are babies… a weird one for the ages!

PLUS- Another episode of Hot Dog with our pals Jonathan Winters, Jo Anne Worley and Woody Allen, movie trailers and commercials 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.

Upcoming Programs
Fri Nov 13 – Weirdsville – Oddities From The Archives
Sat Nov 14 – Feast Your Eyes – Films About Food with Guest Curator Jeremy Menzies
Fri Nov 20 - Mess w/Erik Davis+Gerry Fialka, Plus clips of Anton LeVey, Aleister Crowley, Led Zepplin IV+more
Sat Nov 21 - From Canada! The Best of the Super 8 Challenge
Fri Nov 27 - Forbidden, Not Forgotten – Banned & Censored Cartoons

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://www.flarerecord.com/?p=389