Past Screenings
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"Pick Your Poison: Medicine and
Madness"
3.8.2008 @ 8:00 PM
“Pick Your Poison” is a head rushing
survey of 50 plus years of stress, psychosis, STDs and drug induced euphoria
as seen through medical, military, educational and corporate sponsored films.
The program is selected from over 45,000 films housed at the Oddball Films archive.
Whether campy, eye-poppingly lurid, informational or coldly clinical these films
are sure to give us thanks for our own “sanity”.
Selected films include:
“Le Monde Du Schizophrene” (The World of the Schizophrenic)
A surreal, Daliesque film produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company(Makers
of such drugs as LSD) in Switzerland. “The World of the Schizophrenic”
portrays one afternoon in the life of a hunky schizophrenic as he wanders about
his bedroom and strolls outside hallucinating to the sounds of a Harry Partch
like avant-garde sound score.
“Pain and Its Alleviation” (Color, 1961)
It would take a colleague of horror/gore maestro Herschel Gordon Lewis
like Igo Kantor to edit a film described in educational films
guides like this:
Discusses the complexity of the pain phenomenon and the role of nursing
in providing help and comfort on a professional level. Variations in responses
to pain are indicated and the causes of pain suggested. Designed as an incentive
film to stimulate independent study and research.
In actuality “Pain” is a drama-laden, horror inspired mental hygiene
film produced for the UCLA Nursing School with a over-the-top jazz score by
Sam Weiss. Watch nurses comfort and medicate nut-job neurotics
and car crash victims in their hospital beds. Don’t miss the last vignette
with its “shocking” and hilarious ending.
“Addictive Sopers”(Color, 1978)
Watch a tweaked out Ohio teen talk about Quaaludes and other relaxants as men
in suits warn about the dangers of “Sopers”. The drug companies
remain mum while a ski masked user comes clean on camera. Only in Ohio!
“Ulcer at Work”(B+W, 1957)
Sourpuss executive and browbeating bruiser Steve Hall is the prototypical 1950s
cash register dad with his shopaholic wife and materialistic kids. His stress
level at home and work is at an all-time high. Doc Olmstead tells Steve his
stomach is being eaten away by hydrochloric acid. It’s
all caused by the “wrong kind of feelings.” When
Steve-o shifts his need for self esteem from work to home and starts spending
time with the family he’s back in the driver’s seat. A classic mental
hygiene film.
“One a Minute” (B+W, 1944)
A poker game provides the metaphor for US Navy sailor-saps on shore as they
“take a chance” with the VD-infected hostesses at the Kit Kat Club.
“The only way to cover that sucker bet is to use provalactics” spouts
the doctor. Don’t miss the pretty girls do their “perp walk”
as their std tests are announced. The shame!
“Medical Man”(B+W, Silent, 1969)
A creepy dumpster-diver find. Can you say “mouth muzzle” or “dental
trance”? Weird. Really weird.
Plus! Oddball medical filmstrips!
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“Louis Malle’s Epic
“Phantom India”
2.29.2008 + 3.1.2008 @ 8:00 PM
Situated halfway between complex political treatise and sunstruck
fever dream, more Chris Marker than Frederick Wiseman, Malle’s documentary
stands as an enduring attempt to comprehend a complex, possibly incomprehensible
nation. India may have changed in the 37 years since, and Malle is long dead,
but Phantom India — still relevant, still rapturous — retains its
limitless capacity to haunt.
- John Patterson, LA Weekly
Louis Malle’s phenomenal 6 hour documentary “Phantom
India” screens Friday, February 29th (Episodes 1-3) and Saturday,
March 1 at 8:00PM (Episodes 4-7) at Oddball Films. Home made Indian snacks and
chai will also be available for purchase.
Originally presented as a mini series on European television we are screening the film in two parts. Each episode was designed to be completely autonomous, so that you can watch them in any order. While viewing the entire film is encouraged, whether you come on Friday or Saturday, the films can be enjoyed separately and do not require attendance on both nights.
As part of its ongoing series of films about India from its Archives – including a previous screening of Louis Malle’s “Calcutta” to a sellout crowd – Oddball Films presents the epic documentary “Phantom India”.
Had Louis Malle only made “Phantom India”,
an honored place in the history of film would have still been his. Made with
cinematographer Etienne Becker and sound man Jean-Claude
Laureux — the full extent of the crew for the vast bulk of the
shoot — “Phantom India” is not only a remarkable
document of a time and place, but it's also a meditation on the difficulty of
truly knowing the Other, the way that a camera's "view" always betrays
an attitude or position beyond an objective recording.
In the autumn of 1967 I was asked by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
to present in India a series of eight French films, including ‘The Fire
Within’ — films more or less representative of the new French cinema.
And I said yes. So I went to Delhi and Calcutta and Madras and Bombay presenting
those films. I was supposed to stay two weeks but I ended up staying almost
two months….After those two months I realized that although India was
impossible to understand for a foreigner — it was so opaque — yet
I was so completely fascinated by it that I would have to come back. So I returned
to France at the end of 1967, and in a couple of weeks I raised the money I
needed, which was almost nothing, and went back in early January with two friends
of mine, a cameraman and a sound man. My proposition was that we would start
in Calcutta, look around and eventually shoot. No plans, no script, no lighting
equipment, no distribution commitments of any kind… The interesting aspect
of those documentaries for me was that I took one month just to examine the
material, and then stayed in the cutting room for a year, until the end of 1969
practically. I was in Paris, I was going to the editing room every day and it
was as if I was still in India…It's been like a big chunk of my life.
It was enormously important for me, and I'm still trying to make sense of it
today.
- Louis Malle, from Malle on Malle
The resurfacing of “Phantom India” is timely.
With India's emergence as a world power, the film has a prophetic quality, for
Malle foresaw the country's inevitable modernization and expressed
hope that India's profound spirituality, which has impressed many other foreigners,
would withstand change.
It is fitting that Malle spent most of his time in the countryside,
caught up in the workings of village life, and reserved for the final section,
Bombay (Mumbai), a bellwether for metropolitan life today everywhere —
overcrowding, homelessness, pollution, traffic gridlock and an indifferent privileged
class.
Although never losing sight of chronic hardship and poverty or the oppressiveness
and injustice of the caste system, Malle, with his cameraman
Etienne Becker and sound man Jean-Claude Laureux,
is able to give himself over to the timelessness of agrarian life in which people
live in enviable harmony with nature.
"Phantom India" is no travelogue — there are no shots of the Taj Mahal or tour of maharajahs' palaces — yet it's a beautiful, elegant work. In certain idyllic sequences Malle allowed the tempo of life to set the tempo of his film, which is captivating, at times mesmeric in effect, because the entire film is well-paced, much of it actually brisk.
Like many subsequent documentarians, Malle spent considerable
time exploring India's richly varied religious life, and he suggested how profoundly
sustaining myriad rituals and prayers are in the lives of millions of people.
He focuses on the ancient arts of India, dance, music, One of the most intriguing
segments focuses on those who live on the fringes of Indian society: the aboriginal
Bondo people, who face the increasing loss of forest lands;
the Jewish community of Cochin, which has never known prejudice
but is rapidly dying out; an enclave of Catholic Indians; the Sri Aurobindo
ashram of Pondicherry; and the Toda mountain
tribe, which Malle found to be an ideal society facing extinction
before his very eyes due to confiscation of its lands.
Ultimately, "Phantom India" is a tribute of Malle's
humanity and his skill. It manages to seem free-flowing yet is beautifully shaped
and structured — and it holds interest throughout its marathon running
6 hour time.
The only time I've watched Louis Malle's six-hour, seven-part 1968 documentary series in its entirety was 27 years ago, but seeing two sections again recently reminded me why this may be my favorite of all of his films. This essayistic travel diary avoids any pretense of objectivity in order to present itself as a highly personal search, narrated in excellent English by Malle himself. In the first episode, "The Impossible Camera," Malle addresses the problem of everyone he meets in India describing the country in Western terms, then goes on to reflect on how his filmmaking affects his subjects; from there he takes in everything from a water buffalo being devoured by vultures to interviews with European hippies about why they're in India. "Dream and Reality," the fourth part, is centered onthe Southern State of Kerala and considers the use of elephants as a workforce, Indians' reverence for life, the destruction of the environment, and the three political parties comprising Kerala's communist majority. With his wide-ranging but rambling approach Malle’s mercurial intelligence keeps this lively and fascinating.
-- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
About Louis Malle
"It is only when memory is filtered through imagination that the films
we make will have real depth”
Louis Malle created films that explored life and its meaning.
He first gained recognition as a member of the French New Wave movement of the
1950s. He went on to direct films of great breadth and variety, consciously
avoiding the temptation to repeat himself. Over the course of a nearly forty-year
career, Malle forged a reputation as one of the worlds’
most versatile cinematic storytellers, with such widely acclaimed, and wide-ranging
masterpieces as “Elevator to the Gallows”, “My
Dinner With Andre” and “Au Revoir Les Enfants”.
He worked in the US to make “Pretty Baby” and “Atlantic
City” which both catapulted its stars Brooke Shields and Susan
Sarandon to fame. At the same time, however with less fanfare, Malle was creating
a parallel, even more personal body of work as a documentary filmmaker. In vivid
portraits such as “Calcutta”, “The
Silent World” and “The Pursuit of Happiness”
Malle’s singular vision shined new light on diverse cultures.
His By the time of his death in 1995, Malle was hailed for
his invaluable contributions to world cinema.
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“The Bad Seed”:
Kids Who Kill
2.16.2008 @ 8:00 PM
Mervyn LeRoy’s legendary psycho suspense drama
“The Bad Seed” screens Saturday, February 16th
at 8:00PM at Oddball Films. Also screening is the bizarre Mental Hygiene film
“The Little Black Lamb”, providing a stark contrast
to the sociopathic ”evil child” theme of “The Bad
Seed”.
With most actors cast from the original 1954 Broadway hit “The
Bad Seed” plot was tailor made for Hollywood. Combined with striking
B+W cinematography, a sound score by composer Alex North and
fabulous performances, “The Bad Seed” is one of
the eeriest films of the 1950s. It’s a revered camp classic and a showcase
for some of the most riveting and overwrought acting in movie history —
all overseen by that Lolitaesque vision in pigtails and rollerskates,
Rhoda Penmark played brilliantly by Patty McCormack.
Predicated on the scientifically dubious theory propagated in the 1950s that
evil is an inherited trait, “The Bad Seed” is an
unabashed trashing of the idealized virtuousness that child stars of the 1930s
like Shirley Temple and Judy Garland represented.
It was the inspiration for a entire genre of evil children pictures starting
with Linda Blair in “The Exorcist”
and influencing cinema schlockmeisters like John Waters. Australian singer/actor
Nick Cave even named his band “The Bad Seeds”
after the hit film.
“The Bad Seed” pulls no punches in its portrayal
of eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark, a cute, young pigtailed blonde
with absolutely no moral compass to keep her from brutally slaying anyone who
displeases her, whether it be a classmate who beat her out for a penmanship
medal (“I want that medal!”) or putting a bullet in her own mother.
Played perfectly by Patty McCormack, Rhoda is a cold-blooded
sociopath, with absolutely no ability to understand why beating another child
to death with her tap shoes is a bad idea. Preteen television and Broadway vet
Patty McCormack garnered Oscar and Golden Globe
nods for her portrayal of the pint-sized psychopath and most
of the other actors were nominated as well.
“The Bad Seed” has indelible scenes and devious
dialog that will scar you for life”, say Oddball Films
curator Stephen Parr.“ Despite the fact that director
Billy Wilder had to forgo making the film due to the Production
Code Administration and Warner’s made LeRoy alter the ending,
the film still conveys its essential evil.” says Parr.
Note: In the 90s, San Francisco cult filmmaker Philip
R Ford (“Vegas in Space”) produced an all-drag version
of the play to sell-out shows at Theater Rhinoceros. The last
screening of “The Bad Seed” at Oddball
Films featured an impromptu performance by an obsessed performer doing
her best “Rhoda” impersonation replete with pigtails
and skirt. Watch out cinephiles, Rhoda is coming to get you!
“They don’t
put Little girls in the electric chair!”
Behind “The Bad Seed”
Rhoda Penmark was the brainchild of writer William
March, who drew on the 1950s debate over whether or not evil and mental
illness were hereditary to paint his portrait of a child unconsciously following
in the footsteps of her serial killer grandmother. Playwright Maxwell
Anderson, best known for such historical verse tragedies as Anne of
the Thousand Days and Elizabeth the Queen, turned the story into a hit play
that won Nancy Kelly Broadway's Tony Award for playing Rhoda's
mother and started McCormack on the road to becoming a household name.
Originally director-writer Billy Wilder wanted to make the film version as an independent production, but he ran into trouble when he submitted the script to the industry's own self-censorship organization, the Production Code Administration. One of the Production Code's rules forbade "Pictures dealing with criminal activities, in which minors participate , or to which minors are related." Although juvenile delinquency had been a film subject since the '30s, when the Dead End Kids first hit the screen, Rhoda's criminal doings and the script's extended discussion of heredity were considered too strong for the screen. The implication that she wasn't really responsible for her crimes because she was, as the title suggested, a bad seed, was deemed a bad influence on the youth of America. Wilder dropped the project, only to learn that Warner Brothers had gotten approval for the material simply by offering to create a new ending in which Rhoda would be punished for her crimes. The real difference, in his view, was that Warner’s was a big studio while he was just an independent producer, a conclusion that led to his decision to ignore the Production Code when choosing properties in the future. Ironically, the film he chose to make instead of “The Bad Seed”, “The Spirit of St. Louis” (1957), would be released by Warner’s.
Warner Brothers gave producer-director Mervyn LeRoy the chance to bring “The Bad Seed” to the screen. Initially, they objected to his plan to cast the play's leading players -- including Kelly, McCormack, Eileen Heckart and Henry Jones -- in place of established box-office names like Bette Davis, who had expressed an interest in the film's leading role. He also decided to stick closely to Anderson's original screenplay, working with cinematographer Harold Rosson to open the film up primarily by moving the camera around. The choice paid off by visually isolating and trapping Rhoda's mother as she discovered her little girl was a cold-hearted killer. LeRoy also decided to use a theatrical curtain call at the film's end. He recorded a voiceover introducing the film's cast and, as had been the case when the play was performed, followed the bows by having Kelly take McCormack over her knee for a good spanking(!). After the horror of the film's subject matter, this served to let '50s audiences off-the-hook, while adding to the film's word-of-mouth appeal.
In another move to appease the censors, Warner Bros. added an "adults only" tag to the film's advertising. As a result, the film became one of their biggest hits of the year, grossing $4.1 million (an impressive figure for the time) and landing in the year's top 20 at the box office. The film also landed Oscar nominations for Rosson, Kelly, McCormack and Heckart, with the latter winning the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
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“Nicolas Roeg's films deal in raw emotion, and shake our preconceptions about civilization and cinema. At the peak of his form he was one of Britain's most adventurous directors. The medium's expressive potential is stretched through a masterly montage of time and space; the films' characters are equally tested, forced into journeys of self-exploration, cut adrift from their usual moral and physical surroundings. None of his best films conform to the normal rules of commercial entertainment; they operate more like experimental visual machines, bent on puncturing human complacency.” -- British Film Institute
On Saturday, February 2nd at 8:00PM Oddball Films presents the seldom screened
Nicholas Roeg cult classic “Walkabout”.
Also screening will be rare, color, silent ethnographic shorts from ethnographer/photographer
CP Mountford’s 1946 Central Australian “Brown Men and Red
Sand”, a cinematic journey with a group of desert Aborigines.
The soundscore is provided by the illustrious John Barry (James
Bond features including ”Goldfinger”, "Thunderball”,
“Midnight Cowboy and many more).
“Very few films achieve a kind of subliminal greatness with cross-cultural
impact, but “Walkabout” is one of those films -- a visual tone poem
that functions more as an allegory than a conventionally plotted adventure.”
-- Jeff Shannon
Oddball Films director Stephen Parr recalls seeing “Walkabout”
on late night television as a young boy, amazed at the staggering vastness of
the Australian Outback and dazzled by Roeg’s cross-cut editing and breathtaking
cinematography.
“The natural portrayal of the nude scenes were unlike anything I had
seen on television. The experimental editing was like nothing I’d seen
in films before. I‘ve endeavored to locate a print of the film for years,
if nothing more than to saturate myself in the vivid and expansiveness of that
celluloid experience again. I’ve finally found a 16mm print, with vibrant
color,” says Parr.
Considered a cult favorite for years, Nicolas Roeg's (“Performance”, “Don’t Look Now”, “The Man Who Fell to Earth”) 1971 debut feature -- a mystical masterpiece chronicles the physical, spiritual, and emotional journey of a sister and brother abandoned in the harsh Australian Outback. Joining an Aborigine boy on his walkabout -- a tribal initiation into manhood --these modern children pass from innocence into experience as they are thrust from the comforts of civilization into the beautiful savagery of the natural world.
Playwright Edward Bond’s sinewy dialog undercuts Roeg’s startling images of fierce orange suns, desert insects, lizards and the savage Outback terrain. His cinematic style would go on to influence many filmmakers including director David Lynch.
Through exquisite cinematography and a story of subtle human complexity, the film continues to resonate on many thematic and artistic levels. Roeg had always intended it to be a cautionary morality tale, in which the limitations and restrictions of civilization become painfully clear when the two children (played by Jenny Agutter and Roeg's young son, Lucien John) cannot survive without the aborigine's assistance. They become primitives themselves, if only temporarily, while the young aborigine proves ultimately and tragically unable to join the "family" of civilization. With its story of two worlds colliding, “Walkabout” now seems more relevant and meaningful than ever, hypnotic and open to several compelling levels of interpretation.
About Director Nicholas Roeg
When he made his directorial debut in 1970, Nicolas Roeg was already a 23-year
veteran of the British film industry, starting out in 1947 as an editing apprentice
and working his way up to cinematographer twelve years later. He first came
to attention as part of the second unit on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962),
with Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964) two years later containing
his first really distinctive solo work.
He went on to photograph films for such distinguished directors as François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, 1966), John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967) and Richard Lester (Petulia, 1968) before his sensational directorial debut in 1968. Co-directed with writer (and painter) Donald Cammell, Performance (1970) was intended to be a simple-minded star vehicle for Mick Jagger but Warner Bros was so horrified when they saw the final multi-layered kaleidoscope of sex, violence, and questions of identity that they delayed its release for two years.
Roeg went to Australia for his solo debut as director (Walkabout, 1971), which was also his last film as cinematographer, and throughout the next decade he produced a world-class body of work -- Don't Look Now (1973); The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); Bad Timing (1980) that revealed his uniquely off-kilter view of the world, expressed through fragmented, dislocated images and a highly original yet strangely accessible approach to narrative.
He married the star of Bad Timing (1980), the elegant Theresa Russell who would play the female lead in nearly all his subsequent films, though these have generally found less favor with critics and audiences, and the release of both Eureka (1984) and Cold Heaven (1991) was severely restricted due to problems with the films' distributors.
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On Friday, January 18th at 8:30PM Oddball Films presents
the San Francisco Premiere of David Washburn’s documentary “Broadcast
Cowboy”.
Also featured with be rare Western Swing Soundies from the
archives of Bay Area musicologist and film archivist Steve Hathaway
Director David Washburn and archivist Steve Hathaway will appear
live to introduce, discuss and answer questions about their work and the Bay
Areas history of Western Swing. Oddball Films will also provide rare preshow
Western musical sounds and Roy Rogers TV clips
How did a lanky cowboy singer become the Bay Area's biggest radio and television celebrity of his era? “Broadcast Cowboy” tells the story of Stephen McSwain, aka Dude Martin, one of California's most successful singing cowboys. He was a popular radio host in Oakland during the 1930s and later became one of San Francisco's first television celebrities.Was his cowboy image real or simply a stage persona? “Broadcast Cowboy” surveys the changing landscape of the “real” American cowboy and his role in the television age. Using recorded sound and silent film (some of it rare home movies) footage from the 1930s and 40s, Broadcast Cowboy examines perceptions of America's most iconic image—the cowboy and a man behind his TV myth.
Bay Area film archivist Steve Hathaway also appears live to screen some very rare 16mm Western Swing “Soundies”. Soundies, “jukebox” films that operated in bars, bus and train stations after WWII played musical shorts for a quarter on a large jukebox sized machine.
These rare films captured the spirit of the post war era and featured the cream of the crop of Jazz, Country, Blues performers as well as lesser known talents performing in oftentimes hilarious and outrageous skits.
Films include:
Also screening with be a rare 1949 KGO TV “Hoffman Hayride” performance of Dude Martin and his Roundup Gang performing “Boogie Woogie Cowboy” and 3 hot musical numbers by San Jose legend Shorty Joe and his Red Canyon Cowboys recorded in 1951.
Plus! For early birds-Clips from the Roy Rogers TV show and special Western Swing sounds!
About Director David Washburn
“Broadcast Cowboy” was directed and produced by
David Washburn. He began producing documentaries after years of conducting oral
histories on topics relating to California’s cultural history, including
the WWII Homefront, Country music in the Bay Area and SIkh immigration into
the Central Valley. He shapes his films' narratives around the unique stories
told by his interview subjects, allowing their memories to give direction to
his films.
Washburn was recently awarded a Irvine Foundation Fellowship to the Montalvo Arts Center and is a past recipient of a grant from the California Council for the Humanities. “Broadcast “Cowboy” recently screened at the Oakland International Film Festival and will be screening at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival on KTEH, the PBS affiliate in San Jose.
About Archivist Steve Hathaway
Steve Hathaway has a extensive archive of books, sound recordings,
photographs, 16mm films, and videotapes of rare Country and Jazz music. His
liner notes have been featured on sound recordings by Rhino, Rambler, Bear Family
and Franklin Mint Records. He has contributed musical biographies for The Encyclopedia
of Country Music (Oxford University Press) and publishes the Western
Swing Newsletter. Clips from his film archive have been used in documentaries
on PBS and TNN.
For over 35 year Stompin’ Steve Hathaway has hosted the weekly radio program, “The Cupertino Barndance,” on KKUP Radio in Cupertino, California. The program features classic country music (50’s and 60’s honky tonk, western swing, bluegrass, rockabilly, and contemporary sounds). He has also featured live in-studio performances by local and touring country and rockabilly bands. He also maintains a music calendar of Bay Area rockabilly and twang shows entitled “Hicks With Sticks”.
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On Friday, December 21st at 8:30PM Oddball Films presents a screening of seldom seen films about Buddhist thought featuring the award-winning “Requiem For a Faith: Tibetan Buddhism” and “Buddhism: Man and Nature” by Irving and Elda Hartley with narration by world renown philosophers Dr. Huston Smith and Alan Watts. Also screening will be “Sherpa High Country “ documenting the great annual three-day Mani Rimdu ceremonies held at the Tangboche monastery, Nepal. “Buddha and Beyond: Tibet” explores Buddhist thought and allows us to experience its practice and ceremonies.
Isolated for eons within the remote Himalayas Tibet developed a deeply religious
society, one in which one-sixth of the male
population became monks. Tibet has steadfastly maintained its unique identity,
even under occupation.
In 1967 famed documentarian Elda Hartley and Dr. Huston Smith traveled to Tibet to research and shoot “Requiem for a Faith: Tibetan Buddhism”. Hartley preserves the images of spirituality-the fluttering prayer flags, the lavishly intricate artwork and dance, the monks engaged in lively debate while Smith’s narrative meditation offers a comprehensive overview of the Tibetan belief, from it’s deep compassion and densely populated spirit world, to the role of the Dali Lama and the many methods used to journey to enlightenment.
This award-winning film provides a rare glimpse of hypnotic chanting, ceremonies of the Tibetan monks, who use a chanting technique so unusual that modern science has yet to understand it. Smith narrates this portrait of a society that he says “Is so close to the sky, the natural occupation is to pray”.
“Sherpa High Country” is a beautifully photographed ethnographic documentary of the Sherpas of the Solu Khumbu highlands in Nepal, near Mt. Everest, over 4,000 ft in the sky. Sherpa life is shown in detail and features stunning cinematography of the great annual three-day Mani Rimdu ceremonies held at the Tangboche monastery. During the Mani Rimdu a unique orchestra of horns, drums, conch shells and cymbals accompany ritualistic dances in which monks in vibrant robes and bizarre glowering masks assume deities. These deities represent the historic vanquishing of demons and the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. A remarkable ceremony that draws visitors from around the world.
In the wake if the Vietnam War and Watergate, Alan Watts, Buddhist Scholar and author introduced Eastern religion to a broad range of Americans thirsting for a belief system that could help reconcile modern life with spiritual life. In this classic short film “Buddhism: Man and Nature” (Color, l978) Watts collaborated with Irving and Elda Hartley, leading pioneers in the field of religion on film, to illustrate his meditation on Buddhist spiritual practice as it can be applied to his day. This film offers viewers a window into the life of Watts, the late 20th Century Zen master and the experience of a timeless, masterfully guided meditation guided by Watt’s eloquent prose and the Hartley’s crystalline cinematic images. The award-winning result is this elegant, experiential film.
About the Filmmakers
Elda Hartley
Elda Hartley(1911-2000) began producing documentaries on the world’s great
spiritual traditions, consciousness research, meditation, world peace, health
and healing and death and dying. She has worked with many of the foremost spiritual
leaders, consciousness researchers and healers of the late 20th century, including
Margaret Mead, Joseph Campbell, Ram Dass, John Lilly and Alan
Watts.
About Huston Smith
Huston Smith is widely regarded as the most eloquent and accessible contemporary
authority on the history of religions. His “The Religions of Man”,
first published in 1958 when he was 38, has been one the most widely used texts
in religious studies since its publication. Called the "world's ambassador
to religions everywhere" by Thomas Moore, Smith has learned
firsthand from the teachingsof priests, rabbis, monks, Zen masters, philosophers,
teachers, and believers. In the 1950's, he worked with Timothy Leary
on psychedelic drugs, comparing drug-induced states of consciousness with the
experiences described by mystics.
Professor Smith is a self-described mystic who has tried to understand the world of religion from within. He skillfully makes the complex understandable and conveys the sense of religious ecstasy in a simple yet profound manner. The son of Methodist missionaries, Smith grew up in China. He has danced with Muslim Sufis. He infuses his life with meditationand yoga. He prays daily towards Mecca, on a prayer rug, goes to church on Sunday, and participates with family memers in observing Jewish Sabbath and Seder.
Huston Smith has taught at both Washington University and MIT, and was the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Syracuse University. Subsequently, he was Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, Dr. Smith was the subject of a five-part PBS Special produced by Bill Moyers entitled, “The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith”. He currently resides in Kensington, California.
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On Friday, December 7th at 8:30PM Oddball Films presents a rare screening of pioneer filmmaker Elda Hartley’s film “India and the Infinite”(1979), Richard Riddiford’s, “Benares: Steps to Heaven” (1984) , “Kathakali: Dances of India” (1948) and “Mystic India” (1942) plus pre show shorts and Indian Temple music.
“India and the Infinite” (Color, 1979) focuses on the soul of India, exploring its paradoxes and extremes in a way no Western film ever has. “India and the Infinite” explores India’s many religions - Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity and, of course, Hinduism – its love of ritual and what it symbolizes, its great art and architecture, and the extraordinary leap of consciousness that birthed the concept, “You are God.” Dr. Huston Smith, one of the most eloquent and accessible writers on the history of religion and culture collaborates with Hartley to produce this visual essay of lingering beauty and poetic spirit. This film brilliantly conveys
the seemingly impossible task of giving viewers a concept of what India is truly like-from the inside out. Winner of the Cine Golden Eagle, 1979.
“Benares: Steps to Heaven” (Color, 1984), Richard Riddiford’s beautifully shot profile of Benares (also called Veranasi and Kashi) explores the spiritual forces that have insured the survival of India’s most sacred city for thousands of years. Bathing in the Ganges of Benares gives spiritual cleansing and dying here insures permanent release from reincarnation. Death by funeral pyre brings salvation so Benares is also a city of joy. Through Hindu mythology, the spectacular temples and burning ghats here the dead leave on their final journey out of the endless cycle of life, released by the holiness of Benares City of Lights.
“Kathakali: Dances of India”(B+W, 1948):This remarkably precious film showcases the Kathakali dances of Southern India, a visually poetic and complex system of gestural dances utilizing the face, eyes, mouth, lips and the entire body to create stunning mythological stories and a wide range of human emotion.
“Mystic India”(B+W, 1942): an intriguing caricatured curio of India with its hookah smoking elephants, fakirs lying on beds of nails, snake charmers and architectural monuments and temples.
Plus! Additional preshow shorts and South Indian temple music.
About the Filmmakers
Elda Hartley
Elda Hartley(1911-2000) began producing documentaries on the world’s great
spiritual traditions, consciousness research, meditation, world peace, health
and healing and death and dying. She has worked with many of the foremost spiritual
leaders, consciousness researchers and healers of the late 20th century, including
Margaret Mead, Joseph Campbell, Ram Dass, John Lilly and Alan
Watts.
About Huston Smith
Huston Smith is widely regarded as the most eloquent and accessible contemporary
authority on the history of religions. His “The Religions of Man”,
first published in 1958 when he was 38, has been one the most widely used texts
in religious studies since its publication. Called the "world's ambassador
to religions everywhere" by Thomas Moore, Smith has learned
firsthand from the teachingsof priests, rabbis, monks, Zen masters, philosophers,
teachers, and believers. In the 1950's, he worked with Timothy Leary
on psychedelic drugs, comparing drug-induced states of consciousness with the
experiences described by mystics.
Professor Smith is a self-described mystic who has tried to understand the world of religion from within. He skillfully makes the complex understandable and conveys the sense of religious ecstasy in a simple yet profound manner. The son of Methodist missionaries, Smith grew up in China. He has danced with Muslim Sufis. He infuses his life with meditationand yoga. He prays daily towards Mecca, on a prayer rug, goes to church on Sunday, and participates with family memers in observing Jewish Sabbath and Seder.
Huston Smith has taught at both Washington University and MIT, and was the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Syracuse University. Subsequently, he was Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, Dr. Smith was the subject of a five-part PBS Special produced by Bill Moyers entitled, “The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith”. He currently resides in Kensington, California.
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"Sonic Oddities"
with Stephen Parr & Marshweed Sound-Cinema Live
12.13.2007 @ 8:00 PM
Note: This screening is in Los Angeles and not the Capp St. venue.
On Thursday, December 13th Machine Project Gallery presents “Sonic Oddities”, Oddball Films Director Stephen Parr’s cinematic and auditory collision of film shorts, clips, fragments and reprocessed sounds. A special cinema-sound collaboration between Marshweed’s Heather Lockie and Stephen Parr will also be presented. Lockie, playing banjo and viola will collaborate with Parr’s selected shorts from his vast archives of 16mm film.
The screening takes place at Machine Project Gallery, 1200 D North Alvarado Street in Echo Park, Los Angeles Showtime is 8:00PM. Admission is free.
Drawing on the cinematic stimuli explored in his last major film program “Psychoactive” Stephen Parr excavates and synthesizes more way-out-and-wild “sound-cinema” from his archive of over 45,000 film and media elements.
Rare commercials such as "Magic Ride", GM's Daliesque Chevrolet tour with its pre synthesizer blips and bleeps collide with silent scenes of sunken jetliner wrecks, audio test tones and over-the-top Italian TV stars.
Watch beauty queen Anita Bryant sing the praises of the “Florida Sunshine Tree” while “The Media and the Military” showcases jar-headed GIs listening to Shakespeare and San Francisco beatnik poetry in the classroom. See, “Queer Birds”, one of the most bizarre and endearing cold-war animated shorts in the Oddball archives screen with Philip Stapp’s hallucinatory “First Americans and Their Gods”.
Other shorts include “Eucharist”, the 60s neo-psychedelic
short produced by the Lutheran Church and “Gumby Concerto”,
showcasing our TV rubberman’s improvised sound spree.
Incarnations of “Sonic Oddities” have screened
at C-Level in Los Angeles, the Fast Forward Rewind Festival in Miami and Anthology
Film Archives in NYC.
Also performing in a special cinema-sound collaboration will be Marshweed’s Heather Lockie ( also of Listing Ship) playing solo viola+more to Stephen Parr’s offbeat images.
Special guests to be announced!
About Stephen Parr
Stephen Parr’s cinematic career began in the 70s when he videotaped performers
as diverse as John Cage and the Ramones, later
creating unique signature montages he screened around the world. From New York’s
Danceteria to the
Moscow Cinemateque his burlesque dancers and female contortionists
gyrated over teeming tornadoes and atomic disasters. His previous programs have
explored the erotic underbelly of sex-in-cinema (“The Subject
is Sex”), the offbeat and bizarre (“Oddities Beyond
Belief”), the pervasive effects of propaganda (“Historical/Hysterical!”),
and more.
He has screened his programs around the world and his ongoing Oddball Films
Series always draws sell-out audiences in San Francisco. His company Oddball
Film+Video, a San Francisco stock footage archive supplies footage for feature
films, documentaries, commercials, music videos and creative projects around
the world.
go back
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"Sex-in-Cinema"
12.14.2007 @ 8:30 PM
Note: This screening is in Los Angeles and not the Capp St. venue.
“Sex-in-Cinema” is Oddball Films director Stephen Parr’s over-the-top follow up to “The Subject is Sex” which was hailed by writers and critics like erotic writer Suzie Bright and the LA Weekly who called it “A giddy, sordid tour of an overheated century”.
“Sex-in-Cinema” screens at the Show Cave Night Galley, 1218 Temple Street, Los Angeles on Friday, December 14th at 8:30PM. Admission is $8.00. For more info, write info@oddballfilm.com or showcave@yahoo.com.
“Sex-in-Cinema” is an even more hilarious rollercoaster through the sights and sounds of seamy American cinema. In “Sex-in-Cinema” Parr takes wide aim at all aspects of sex in culture as he presents more offbeat and off-the-wall wonders from his erotic film archives. Bizarre burlesque bits, sex-driven cigarette ads, peepshow loops combine with campy movie trailers and sex-is-where-you-find-it commercials all make this a not-to-be-missed orgy of schlock erotic cinema. “Sex-in-Cinema” premiered at New York’s Anthology Film Archive at the “It Hurts My Brain” Festival in September 2005 to a rave response.
Don’t miss Parr’s infamous “Cheap Smut
Give-A-Way!”
Plus! The swingin’ recorded sounds of 60 French Schoolgirls.
Highlights include:
*Seaside Films nudie cutie “Sadie the Sunbather”(1940s)
*Camp trailers like “White Mama, Black Mama”
*Erotic tidbits from the “Best of the New York Erotic Film Festival”(60s
and 70s)
*Bubble/Fan dancer Sally Rand’s “Artist Model”(50s)
*Sexy commercials like the Felliniesque spot for “Jeno’s Pizza Rolls”
*An “Inside” look at Fredericks of Hollywood 70s style!
About Stephen Parr
Stephen Parr’s cinematic career began in the 70s when he videotaped performers
as diverse as John Cage and the Ramones, later
creating unique signature montages he screened around the world. From New York’s
Danceteria to the
Moscow Cinemateque his burlesque dancers and female contortionists
gyrated over teeming tornadoes and atomic disasters. His previous programs have
explored the erotic underbelly of sex-in-cinema (“The Subject
is Sex”), the offbeat and bizarre (“Oddities Beyond
Belief”), the pervasive effects of propaganda (“Historical/Hysterical!”),
and more.
He has screened his programs around the world and his ongoing Oddball Films
Series always draws sell-out audiences in San Francisco. His company Oddball
Film+Video, a San Francisco stock footage archive supplies footage for feature
films, documentaries, commercials, music videos and creative projects around
the world.
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On Saturday, December 1st at 8:00 PM Oddball Films for "Sita Sings the Blues" Nina Paley's mythic, animated musical feature. Funds raised will be used to output the film to 35mm for theatrical distribution. "Sita" tells the story of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana through the perspective of Sita, played by legendary 1920's blues vocalist Annette Hanshaw.
View the Sita Sings the Blues Trailer (at the Internet Archive)
more info: http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
With music, humor, and a range of animation techniques, "Sita Sings the Blues" shows how the genius of the Indian Ramayana transcends societies and generations, and is as relevant today as it was 3,000 years ago. You've never seen such a bold, brilliant and vibrantly wild work like this so don't miss this one-of-a-kind chance to see this musical gem! Last year's Preview Screening was a total sell-out!
Pandorama
Drawing directly on 15perf/70mm ("IMAX") film Paley's film is a new look at
mythology's demonized heroines, Pandora and the biblical Eve. With over 2500
images!
Nina Paley Talks About "Sita Sings the Blues" "My subject matter is controversial. While I've been greatly encouraged by the overwhelming positive response from desis (South Asian expatriates), some viewers in India have been outraged. The Ramayana is a perplexing tale, and Sita is its most misunderstood character. I've heard from more than one Hindu American woman that "Sita Sings the Blues" is the first Ramayana retelling that offers them a real connection to Sita. My retelling is also humorous, which some people interpret as irreverent, and therefore an affront. Not that this has any bearing on my work; as I learned from "The Stork", the greater the risks in art, the greater the rewards. I have nothing but love and admiration for my source material now. I hope to show how the genius of the Ramayana transcends societies and generations, and is as relevant today as it was 3,000 years ago".
In June 2002, I moved to Trivandrum, India, following my (American) husband who had taken a job there. Upon my arrival I was confronted with his mid-life crisis, a complete emotional withdrawal. This left me without support in a city in which women were 2nd-class citizens, unable to walk alone at night, and not expected to have an identity separate from their husbands. It was in Trivandrum I encountered the Indian epic, The Ramayana, for the first time. Like many westerners, I initially considered the Ramayana little more than misogynist propaganda. Meanwhile I was in the midst of developing a new comic strip for King Features Syndicate, The Hots. After 3 months in Trivandrum, King Features flew me to their New York headquarters for a launch meeting. Then my husband dumped me by email.
Unable to return to my former apartment in San Francisco, or my new apartment in Trivandrum, I moved to Brooklyn. My professional life benefited, as I began teaching animation at Parsons School of Design and acquiring New York freelance clients. Emotionally, however, my relocation commenced a terrible year of grief. The Ramayana took on new depth and meaning for me.
It no longer resembled a sexist parable; rather, it seemed to capture the essence of painful relationships, and describe a blueprint of human suffering. My grief and longing for the man who rejected me increasingly resembled Sita's; my husband's withdrawal reminded me of Rama. In Manhattan I heard the music of Annette Hanshaw for the first time. A radio star of the late 1920's, Hanshaw specialized in heartfelt blues and torch songs.
In my grief-addled state, her songs, my story, and the Ramayana merged into one: "Sita Sings the Blues". Originally, I hoped to expel my demons of heartbreak with a single short film, Trial By Fire (2003). This set a pivotal scene from the Ramayana, Sita's walk through a funeral pyre, to Annette Hanshaw's 1929 rendition of Mean to Me. Trial By Fire won 2nd Place in New York's 2004 ASIFA-East Animation Festival, and screened in festivals in San Francisco, Latvia, and Red Bank, but I refrained from promoting it further. Audiences loved the design and animation, but were not sufficiently familiar with the Ramayana to really understand the story. Furthermore, my demons weren't adequately expressed; I was still tormented by grief and heartache.
When another relationship failed in November of 2004, I saw only one course of action: I had to tell the whole Ramayana story from Sita's point of view. "Sita Sings the Blues", a 72-minute feature, would be my salvation. I began production in December 2004. In April 2005, a popular weblog called BoingBoing reported on my work-in-progress; within hours, thousands of viewers were downloading the movie clips I posted online, temporarily shutting down my web site. Reviews began appearing on hundreds of other weblogs, all positive. This was followed by print newspaper and magazine coverage in Switzerland, Korea, and India, as well as India Abroad in New York. Artwallah, Los Angeles' South Asian Arts Festival, solicited and screened a chapter called Dandaka Dharma which also won an Excellence in Design award from ASIFA-East's 2005 festival.
About Nina Paley
Nina Paley's career began in 1988 with her self-syndicated comic strip, Nina's
Adventures, which appeared in several alternative newspapers and two paperback
collections, Depression is Fun and Nina's Adventures. She created two solo comic
books for Dark Horse Comics, and various graphic short stories for Last Gasp
Comix, Rip Off Press, Laugh Lines Press, Grateful Dead Comix, Kitchen Sink Press,
and the Japanese artist volume Jarebong. Her first mainstream daily comic strip,
Fluff, was distributed internationally by Universal Press Syndicate between
1995 and 1998; in 2002 she drew The Hots for King Features Syndicate.
Comics burn-out drove Nina to animation. Her first film, Luv Is...(1998), was clay stop-motion shot with a vintage super-8 camera. She went on to make 3 more films in 1998, each exploring a different medium or technique: Cancer (drawing and scratching on 35mm), I Heart My Cat (16mm stop-motion) and Follow Your Bliss (traditional pencil and ink on paper). In 1999 she made the world's first completely cameraless IMAX film, Pandorama, and received a grant from the Film Arts Foundation to produce Fetch! (2001), a short film incorporating optical illusions. In 2002 she created a controversial series about overpopulation and the environment, including the Stork, which won first prize at the EarthVision Environmental Film Festival and an unsolicited invitation to Sundance (2003).
In 2002 she briefly lived in Trivandrum, India, where she encountered the Ramayana, Indian sexism, and the failure of her marriage. She subsequently embarked on her current project, "Sita Sings the Blues," a feature-in-progress combining ancient Indian mythology with 1920's American jazz.
In addition to making independent animated festival films, Nina teaches at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. She lives in New York with her cat, Bruno.
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On Friday, November 30th Oddball Films presents "The Other America: Jazz Roots Cinema" two seldom-seen films "Mingus" (1968) and "Black Music in America: From Then Till Now" (1971) highlighting the struggles and achievements of black music in our culture.
"The Other America: Jazz Roots Cinema" features Tom Reichman's penetrating cinema verite look at the struggle of jazz icon Charles Mingus as he and his daughter faces hard times. Rare and riveting footage of Mingus performing on stage in a nightclub near Boston, conducting a big band and composing and singing is inter cut with scenes of the proud musician in his cluttered New York loft, where-- while awaiting eviction-- from his failed dream of a jazz school-he speaks candidly on topics ranging from music to sex to racism. Mingus, originally from the Watts ghetto in Los Angeles worked his way up the musical ladder to become one of the greatest musicians in the history of jazz working with virtually everyone in the business. Throughout his career most of Mingus's music retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop, and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third Stream Jazz and free jazz. Yet Mingus avoided categorization, forging his own unique brand of music that fused tradition with unique and unexplored realms of jazz. He's influenced countless musicians and artists as diverse as the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and Joni Mitchell (whom he collaborated with).
In this film he is joined in performances by Dannie Richmond, Walter Bishop, John Gilmore (Sun Ra)and Charles McPherson playing such tunes as "All the Things You Are", "Secret Love", and "Take the A Train". The film is also punctuated with some inspiring poetry. Charles Mingus is often considered the heir apparent to the great Duke Ellington both for his transcendent musicianship and his visionary compositions.
"Black Music in America: From Then Till Now"(Color, 1971) is a rare documentary that provides us with an illuminating history of black music from the introduction of slavery in America to the recent past. It introduces renowned black musicians and their contributions to jazz, blues, spirituals, protest songs, swing and rock n' roll music. This film includes priceless performances of Louis Armstrong in Ghana swingin' with the natives, Bessie Smith from the film St. Louis Blues, Bandleader Count Basie, "Lady Day" Billie Holiday, BB King live on stage, song stylist Nina Simone, jazz legend Coleman Hawkins, American jazz genius Duke Ellington, horn legend Cannonball Adderly and group and a soul rocking psychedelic Sly and the Family Stone performance!
Also screening will be "Buck Dancer"(1965), a rare portrait of an African American buck dancer and fife player who briefly performs on the steps of his home in rural Mississippi. The film was made by the great American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax.