Current Screenings by Oddball Film + Video

Sonic Oddities
With Electronics+Acoustic Sound Interlude by Rod Poole+Friends

Saturday, May 17, 2003 at 8:30PM
Other Cinema
992 Valencia St.
 San Francisco
http://www.othercinema.com
Admission Free

Sonic Oddities is a trek through the auditory oddities of film history. This 90 minute program of archival and contemporary film shorts includes educational films such as "First Americans and Their Gods", a uniquely animated short with an eerie musique concrete soundscore, commercials such as "Magic Ride", GM's surreal Daliesque Chevrolet tour with its pre synthesizer electronic blips and bleeps track, promotional films for new sound inventions including the orchestrally obverblown "The Challenge For Tomorrow", RCA's futurist propagandizing, B+W Soundies with sound pioneers Spike Jones, and Slim Gaillard, color jukebox 60s Scopitones, the rare French sensation that forever campified the music video and other music weirdness from the archives of Oddball Films.

 

 
 

The Subject is Sex

Wednesday, March 5, 2003 at 8:00PM
Sponto Gallery
7 Dudley Street (one block South of Rose St. half block East of the Boardwalk)
Venice, California
Info: 310.306.7330
Admission Free
seating is limited please arrive early!

Thursday, March 6, 2003 at 8:00PM
Echo Park Film Center
http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org
1200 N. Alvarado Street
Los Angeles, California
Info: 213.484.8846
Admission $5.00

Friday, March 14 & 21, 2003
( Two Nights!) at 10:00PM
Spanganga
http://www.spanganga.com/
3376 19th Street
San Francisco, California
Info: 415.821-1102
Admission: $7.00

Stephen Parr of Oddball Film+Video presents an extraordinary personal romp through the underbelly of Sex in Cinema - 2+hrs. of erotica, porn, doc, industrial, and unintentional camp. This polymorphous program promises a pulsating panorama of perverse pleasures that include shorts straight and gay, old and new, home-movies, hillbilly porn, cartoon smut, artists' sketches, commercials, trailers, educationals and military instructional films("How to Give an Enema"), hygiene films and a preview of contemporary shot in San Francisco fetish erotica. PLUS! Lilli St. Cyr, burlesque bits, verité footage from porn sets, and oozing oodles more.

DON'T MISS the "Cheap-Smut-Give-Away" during intermission!

 

 



 

 


 

Past Exhibitions

"Historical/Hysterical" Film Screening





Oddball Film+Video presents the first in a continuing series of film exhibitions. The first, "Historical/Hysterical", curated by Oddball director Stephen Parr was screened at the Three Eight Creative Group in San Francisco in April of 1999. The second screening, presented by The Alliance Cinema and Cinema Vortex in Miami will take place on August 14th and 15, l999. See program below for screening details and complete schedule. Please visit this site for updates on upcoming events.

Cinema Vortex Saturday, August 14th at midnight and Sunday, August 15 at 1pm.

"Historical/Hysterical" film screening curated and compiled by Stephen Parr

"Historical/Hysterical" is the first in a series of historically based film screenings curated by Stephen Parr, director of Oddball Film+Video, a stock film archive based in San Francisco. The series is both a historical and offbeat look at the wide range of specialized films made in the last half century. It is both enlightening and fascinating, hilarious and sublime in it's examination of specialized film making. "Historical/Hysterical" is as Parr calls it "A fractured compendium of global propaganda". Historical/Hysterical examines the global culture of film making and touches on educational, scientific, military, movie trailers, exploitation films, sales films, religious, industrial films and television commercials from the 20s through the 60s to showcase the offbeat and oftentimes bizarre visions of genre films. Surreal exploitation trailers such as "Terror of the Tongs" and "Black Mama, White Mama" are interspersed with commercials showcasing flying cars and female gangsters selling ginger ale in "America's Going Dry". The surreal scientific "Our Ant Gang" examines ornery insects while the do gooder "Boy Scout Jamboree" emphasizes team work and all American discipline. Law enforcement training films such as "The Use of Mace" demonstrate a solution to violent subjugation while immobilizing a hapless volunteer. In "Media and the Military" trainees watch beat poetry and learn about "multimedia" tools in the 50s. Historical/Hysterical is curator Stephen Parr's take on the wild, the way-out and the historically hilarious sublime moments in global filmmaking. Parr is also director of the San Francisco Media Archive, a non profit film archive dedicated to the preservation of film in all genres. The films from this screening are culled from the collection at Oddball as well as the San Francisco Media Archive collection.

See what "The Miami New Times" review ("Not PC Cinema," By Nina Korman) and event description (by Brett Sokol) say about "Historical/Hysterical".

MOVIE PRICES & DIRECTIONS: Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $6 for the general public, $5 for senior citizens , but only $4 for members. Matinees (before 6 PM) $4. Admission to Cinema Vortex shows is $4. The Alliance Cinema is located at 927 Lincoln Road in Suite 119 of the Sterling Building, between Michigan and Jefferson Aves in Miami Beach

Historical/Hysterical Screening
Fractured compendium of global propaganda
Curated by Stephen Parr, Oddball Film+Video

Program One
The First Americans And Their Gods Part One
(Educational, Color, 11 min., 1950, by Philip Stapp)
Drums of Africa(Movie Trailer, 1 min, Color, 1963, MGM)
Kentucky Pioneers(Educational, B+W, 11 min, 1941 ERPI Classroom Films)
Our Ant Gang(Educational, Silent, B+W, 3 min., Silent, 1927, Tolhurst Popular Science Series)
Kathakali(Dances of India) (Promotional, 10 min., B+W, 1940s, Government of India Information Films)
Something to Take to Heart/Coconut Head Making(Religious Information, B+W, 10 min., 1950s, Producer Unknown)
Constant As the Stars(Commercial, B+W, 1 min., Date Unknown, Bulova)
Wild World(Ethnographic clips, 6 min., B+W, 1930's, producers unknown)
Zorro's Fighting Legion(Movie Trailer, B+W, Date Unknown, 2 min., Republic Pictures)
Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie by Carson Robison and His Buckaroos(Musical Soundie, B+W, 4 min., 1940s, Castle Films)

Program Two
Boy Scout Jamboree(Promotional Film, B+W, 3 min., 1940s, Producer Unknown)
Art/Draw Me(Promotional Film, B+W, 4 min., Date and Producer Unknown)
Media and the Military(Military, B+W, 4 min., Date and Producer Unknown)
White Mamma, Black Mama(Two Movie Trailer, Color, 3 min., Date Unknown, AIP)
Coast Guard Spars(Military Information, B+W, 5 min., Date Unknown, US Coast Guard)
Flying Car(Commercial, B+W, 30 seconds, Date Unknown, American Motors)
The Electric Eel(Educational, Color, 13 min., Date Unknown, Moody Institute of Science)
Use of Mace(Commercial Promotion, Color faded, 3 min., Reader's Digest Films)
The Face of Terror(Movie Trailer, B+W, Date Unknown, Hammer Films)
Terror of the Tongs(Movie Trailer, B+W, Date+Producer Unknown)
Helping Your Child Feel Emotionally Secure(Educational, Color, 11 min., Date Unknown, Seminar Films)
Starve a Rat(Commercial, Color, Date Unknown, NYC Dept of Health)
Violence(Commercial, B+W, Date Unknown, Bond Bread)
Americas Going Dry(Commercial, Color, Date Unknown, Canada Dry)
Krystallos(Educational, Color, 11 min., Date Unknown, Western Electric)