11/5/15 – Cinema Soiree with Canyon Cinema at Oddball Films
Posted October 28th, 2015 in Events and Screenings, News / Events
Oddball Films welcomes Canyon Cinema Foundation to their Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Screening are selection of rare films from Canyon’s collection celebrating San Francisco – it’s makers, landscape, culture and weirdos. This program highlights works made in the Bay Area over a period of 30 years and offers glimpses of beloved artists, subversive behavior and transformed cityscapes. Presented on 16mm, this Soiree will include Nathaniel Dorsky’s 17 Reasons Why (1987) affording viewers a unique opportunity to check out the film’s namesake and historic San Francisco landmark sign up close in the Oddball archive (where the sign now resides). Also included are: a rare local presentation of Tomonari Nishikawa’s dual projection work Into the Mass (2007), Greta Snider’s irreverent documentary Hard Core Home Movie (1989), Alice Anne Parker Severson’s Introduction to Humanities (1972), Degrees of Limitation (1982) by Scott Stark, a disheveled rogue running loose through the area where now stands AT&T Park in Thad Povey’s The Story or AARGH-X: Wildman of Mystery (Episode 1) (1997), By the Sea (1982) by Toney Merritt, and more!
This is a mini-benefit screening for Canyon Cinema!
Admission is $12.00 – Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Make a Donation and receive a gift! T-shirts, Tote Bags, Vintage Catalogs and other rare delights among the benefits which will be available. Cash Only!
ODDBALL FILMS is located at 275 Capp Street (between 18th St and 17th St)
Full program notes –
Introduction to Humanities | Alice Anne Parker Severson | 1972 | 5 minutes B&W, sound
My first year Humanities class at the San Francisco Art Institute steps before the camera and introduces itself one by one.
Hard Core Home Movie | Greta Snider | 1989 | 5 minutes | B&W | sound
Additional photography: Bruce Stewart
HARD-CORE is a frank and irreverent documentary that asks the question, “what is hard-core?” Seedy, grainy, and fast-paced, this is a nostalgic look at an ephemeral moment in the history of a subculture: punk rock in San Francisco in the late eighties. Everyone from fucked-up teenagers to elderly Mexican tourists attempts to explain the allure and mystique of the scene. Filmed at SF’s historical petting-zoo/theater/punk rock emporium The Farm.
Sisters! | Barbara Hammer | 1973 | 8 minutes | COLOR | SOUND
A celebration and collage of lesbians, including footage of the Women’s International Day march in SF and joyous dancing from the last night of the second Lesbian Conference where Family of Woman played; as well as images of women doing all types of traditional “men’s” work.
The Story or AARGH-X: Wildman of Mystery (Episode 1) | Thad Povey | 1997 | 4 minutes | COLOR | sound
Discovered running loose in the streets of the city, a disheveled rogue is hunted and captured by a bounty hunter.
Music: Ween; Filmed at 30 Berry Street, San Francisco
Degrees of Limitation | Scott Stark | 1982 | 3 minutes | COLOR | SILENT
A single 100′ roll shot with a hand-wound 16mm Bolex. For each shot the camera was wound one additional time, allowing me to make it a little bit farther up the hill. Will I reach the top before the film runs out? A study in self-imposed limitations.
In Marin County | Peter Hutton | 1970 | 10 minutes | COLOR | sound
“IN MARIN COUNTY approaches the subject of America’s ecological disaster as a comic yet bizarre vision. The tradition of Old MacDonald’s farm has long since disappeared and in its place are bulldozer and insect sprays. Our fascination with these mechanized wonders of civilization may well prove to be more lethal than we would have imagined. Peter Hutton has succeeded in making an important statement on ecology and the strange delight Americans take in destroying things.” – Whitney Museum of American Art
Into the Mass | Tomonari Nishikawa | 2007 | 6 minutes | COLOR | SILENT – dual projection!
Attaching two super 8 cameras on my bicycle, one on each pedal, I captured the side views of streets, while riding the bike from the Headlands Center for the Arts to San Francisco. The ride joined in the the Critical Mass, an event by San Francisco bicyclists on the last Friday of each month. The dual projection image shows the new landscape of the city.
By the Sea | Toney W. Merritt | 1982 | 2.5 minutes | COLOR | SILENT
A film made from my [Merritt’s] old studio apartment on Telegraph Hill. A portrait of sorts.
17 Reasons Why | Nathaniel Dorsky | 1987 | 19 minutes | COLOR | SILENT
17 REASONS WHY was photographed with a variety of semi-ancient regular 8 cameras and is projected unslit as 16mm. These pocket-sized relics enabled me to walk around virtually “unseen,” exploring and improvising with the immediacy of a more spontaneous medium. The four image format has built-in contrapuntal resonances, ironies, and beauty, and in each case gives us an unpretentious look at the film frame itself … the simple and primordial delight of luminous Kodachrome and rich black and white chugging thru these timeworn gates.
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.
