Oddball Films and guest curator/archivist Scotty Slade invite you to Beyond Words: The Art of Communication, a presentation of 16mm films and live poetic performances exploring the need for and the many faces of language.
Although the likes of Plato and Sitting Bull had already postulated as much, it wasn’t until the year 1964 a.d. that the wizard and media theorist Marshall McLuhan finally broke the spell the phonetic alphabet had placed on us with his famous statement, “the medium is the message.” Where we were once free-loving, non-questioning, less than consciously aware-of-its-effects-on-us users of this highly abstract form of symbolic representations of human-created phonemes, McLuhan’s words revealed that behind the curtain of written language was a strange and powerful truth. This terrifying and all too real reality, is at the heart of this program. Because let’s face it, for all we know, The Language of the Bees (1965) might stem from the same primordial linguistic root as our own. The shift from pictographic writing systems, as we see in Pictographs (1957), very well may have contributed to our ongoing and pervasive disconnection from the natural world. And really, are we still like those “blind” and less-than-aware inhabitants of Plato's Cave (1973), mistakenly taking the shadows on the wall for real creatures? Perhaps Oakland poet Mary-Louise Hansen, who will perform her epic poem, Walking in the Dreamland, as the live score to this highly bizarre portrayal of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave might help awaken us to the potential of reality! Drawn out of the depths of darkness, we shall walk in another dreamland, lugging our Baggage (1969) through the streets of San Francisco with the incredible mime Mamako Yoneyama, in this travelogue of the speaking body. And perhaps after this mix of dreamlike fantasy-land far-outedness, a dose of reality is in order, with an intimate home movie of a deaf family on summer vacation from the 1940's. Which reminds us that language of the hands and body is more universal than we may at first glance realize, and perhaps no film demonstrates this better than Hand Signals for Agriculture (1976), an elegant and comical dance of farmers and their machines. And perhaps no sonic score could better augment this gem than a live performance of Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters’s, Ursonate! Let us not forget, however, that no matter how conscious or unconscious we are to our speaking bodies, certain, Invisible Walls (1969), it turn out, are exactly 18 inches from and around our bodies, forming what is commonly known, as “the comfort zone” and about which we are highly expressive. To cap off our meditation on the written word, a quick lesson in High Speed Reading (1950s), and finally, to put a real period on this film screening about language, Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945). So come, discuss, engage, and speak with all your speaking body!
Date: Thursday, May 22nd, 2014 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to [email protected] or 415-558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Featuring:
Pictographs (Color, 1957)
Explore the written (and drawn) word before alphabets existed in this antique archaelogical short. The loveable and entertaining Dr. Frank Baxter leads us through an inviting lesson in the pictographic written language of American Indians.
Language of the Bees (Color, 1965)
Go beyond the buzz and explore the hum of the hive with the bee-master, entymologist Dr. Karl von Frisch. This vintage science short explains everything you've always wanted to know about the language of bees.
Plato's Cave (Color, 1973)
A super bizarre representation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, this part stop-motion and crazy costume film will be coupled with a reading of a segment from Plato's Phaedrus to ponder not only the awakening of the philosphical mind, but how the philosophical mind is molded by written and/or oral tradition!
Hand Signals for Agriculture (Color, 1976)
Farmers can also perform modern dance in the field. And thus communicate most effectively.
Baggage (B+W, 1969)
In a series of vignettes, a young girl wrestles with her burden. When she manages, however, to rid herself of it, she feels completely lost. Reunited with her ‘baggage’, she greets it with grateful resignation. She cannot exist without it, but it weighs so heavily on her mind that it prevents her from enjoying the world around her. As spoken by the body of the magical Mamako Yoneyama.
Invisible Walls (B+W, 1969)
The proxemics of the the comfort zone - we do not like it when people get more than 18 inches from our bodies!
A Study in Choreography for the Camera (B+W, 1945)
A cognizant combination of dance language and filmic language.
Maya Deren was one of the most important avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century working and spending time with such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton, John Cage and Anaïs Nin. In A Study in Choreography Maya Deren's 16mm Bolex becomes a performer equal in significance to the star of this film, Talley Beattey. In the opening sequence Deren's camera rotates more than 360 degrees, scanning past the figure in movement. In this film Deren articulates the potential for transcendence through dance and ritual. Deren writes, “The movement of the dancer creates a geography that never was. With a turn of the foot, he makes neighbors of distant places" -Wendy Haslem
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, educational films, 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.
show less
Although the likes of Plato and Sitting Bull had already postulated as much, it wasn’t until the year 1964 a.d. that the wizard and media theorist Marshall McLuhan finally broke the spell the phonetic alphabet had placed on us with his famous statement, “the medium is the message.” Where we were once free-loving, non-questioning, less than consciously aware-of-its-effects-on-us users of this highly abstract form of symbolic representations of human-created phonemes, McLuhan’s words revealed that behind the curtain of written language was a strange and powerful truth. This terrifying and all too real reality, is at the heart of this program. Because let’s face it, for all we know, The Language of the Bees (1965) might stem from the same primordial linguistic root as our own. The shift from pictographic writing systems, as we see in Pictographs (1957), very well may have contributed to our ongoing and pervasive disconnection from the natural world. And really, are we still like those “blind” and less-than-aware inhabitants of Plato's Cave (1973), mistakenly taking the shadows on the wall for real creatures? Perhaps Oakland poet Mary-Louise Hansen, who will perform her epic poem, Walking in the Dreamland, as the live score to this highly bizarre portrayal of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave might help awaken us to the potential of reality! Drawn out of the depths of darkness, we shall walk in another dreamland, lugging our Baggage (1969) through the streets of San Francisco with the incredible mime Mamako Yoneyama, in this travelogue of the speaking body. And perhaps after this mix of dreamlike fantasy-land far-outedness, a dose of reality is in order, with an intimate home movie of a deaf family on summer vacation from the 1940's. Which reminds us that language of the hands and body is more universal than we may at first glance realize, and perhaps no film demonstrates this better than Hand Signals for Agriculture (1976), an elegant and comical dance of farmers and their machines. And perhaps no sonic score could better augment this gem than a live performance of Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters’s, Ursonate! Let us not forget, however, that no matter how conscious or unconscious we are to our speaking bodies, certain, Invisible Walls (1969), it turn out, are exactly 18 inches from and around our bodies, forming what is commonly known, as “the comfort zone” and about which we are highly expressive. To cap off our meditation on the written word, a quick lesson in High Speed Reading (1950s), and finally, to put a real period on this film screening about language, Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945). So come, discuss, engage, and speak with all your speaking body!
Date: Thursday, May 22nd, 2014 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to [email protected] or 415-558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Featuring:
Pictographs (Color, 1957)
Explore the written (and drawn) word before alphabets existed in this antique archaelogical short. The loveable and entertaining Dr. Frank Baxter leads us through an inviting lesson in the pictographic written language of American Indians.
Language of the Bees (Color, 1965)
Go beyond the buzz and explore the hum of the hive with the bee-master, entymologist Dr. Karl von Frisch. This vintage science short explains everything you've always wanted to know about the language of bees.
Plato's Cave (Color, 1973)
A super bizarre representation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, this part stop-motion and crazy costume film will be coupled with a reading of a segment from Plato's Phaedrus to ponder not only the awakening of the philosphical mind, but how the philosophical mind is molded by written and/or oral tradition!
Hand Signals for Agriculture (Color, 1976)
Farmers can also perform modern dance in the field. And thus communicate most effectively.
Baggage (B+W, 1969)
In a series of vignettes, a young girl wrestles with her burden. When she manages, however, to rid herself of it, she feels completely lost. Reunited with her ‘baggage’, she greets it with grateful resignation. She cannot exist without it, but it weighs so heavily on her mind that it prevents her from enjoying the world around her. As spoken by the body of the magical Mamako Yoneyama.
Invisible Walls (B+W, 1969)
The proxemics of the the comfort zone - we do not like it when people get more than 18 inches from our bodies!
A Study in Choreography for the Camera (B+W, 1945)
A cognizant combination of dance language and filmic language.
Maya Deren was one of the most important avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century working and spending time with such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton, John Cage and Anaïs Nin. In A Study in Choreography Maya Deren's 16mm Bolex becomes a performer equal in significance to the star of this film, Talley Beattey. In the opening sequence Deren's camera rotates more than 360 degrees, scanning past the figure in movement. In this film Deren articulates the potential for transcendence through dance and ritual. Deren writes, “The movement of the dancer creates a geography that never was. With a turn of the foot, he makes neighbors of distant places" -Wendy Haslem
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, educational films, 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.
Oddball Films and guest curator/archivist Scotty Slade invite you to Beyond Words: The Art of Communication, a presentation of 16mm films and live poetic performances exploring the need for and the many faces of language.
Although the likes of Plato and Sitting Bull had already postulated as much, it wasn’t until the year 1964 a.d. that the wizard and media theorist Marshall McLuhan finally broke the spell the phonetic alphabet had placed on us with his famous statement, “the medium is the message.” Where we were once free-loving, non-questioning, less than consciously aware-of-its-effects-on-us users of this highly abstract form of symbolic representations of human-created phonemes, McLuhan’s words revealed that behind the curtain of written language was a strange and powerful truth. This terrifying and all too real reality, is at the heart of this program. Because let’s face it, for all we know, The Language of the Bees (1965) might stem from the same primordial linguistic root as our own. The shift from pictographic writing systems, as we see in Pictographs (1957), very well may have contributed to our ongoing and pervasive disconnection from the natural world. And really, are we still like those “blind” and less-than-aware inhabitants of Plato's Cave (1973), mistakenly taking the shadows on the wall for real creatures? Perhaps Oakland poet Mary-Louise Hansen, who will perform her epic poem, Walking in the Dreamland, as the live score to this highly bizarre portrayal of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave might help awaken us to the potential of reality! Drawn out of the depths of darkness, we shall walk in another dreamland, lugging our Baggage (1969) through the streets of San Francisco with the incredible mime Mamako Yoneyama, in this travelogue of the speaking body. And perhaps after this mix of dreamlike fantasy-land far-outedness, a dose of reality is in order, with an intimate home movie of a deaf family on summer vacation from the 1940's. Which reminds us that language of the hands and body is more universal than we may at first glance realize, and perhaps no film demonstrates this better than Hand Signals for Agriculture (1976), an elegant and comical dance of farmers and their machines. And perhaps no sonic score could better augment this gem than a live performance of Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters’s, Ursonate! Let us not forget, however, that no matter how conscious or unconscious we are to our speaking bodies, certain, Invisible Walls (1969), it turn out, are exactly 18 inches from and around our bodies, forming what is commonly known, as “the comfort zone” and about which we are highly expressive. To cap off our meditation on the written word, a quick lesson in High Speed Reading (1950s), and finally, to put a real period on this film screening about language, Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945). So come, discuss, engage, and speak with all your speaking body!
Date: Thursday, May 22nd, 2014 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to [email protected] or 415-558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Featuring:
Pictographs (Color, 1957)
Explore the written (and drawn) word before alphabets existed in this antique archaelogical short. The loveable and entertaining Dr. Frank Baxter leads us through an inviting lesson in the pictographic written language of American Indians.
Language of the Bees (Color, 1965)
Go beyond the buzz and explore the hum of the hive with the bee-master, entymologist Dr. Karl von Frisch. This vintage science short explains everything you've always wanted to know about the language of bees.
Plato's Cave (Color, 1973)
A super bizarre representation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, this part stop-motion and crazy costume film will be coupled with a reading of a segment from Plato's Phaedrus to ponder not only the awakening of the philosphical mind, but how the philosophical mind is molded by written and/or oral tradition!
Hand Signals for Agriculture (Color, 1976)
Farmers can also perform modern dance in the field. And thus communicate most effectively.
Baggage (B+W, 1969)
In a series of vignettes, a young girl wrestles with her burden. When she manages, however, to rid herself of it, she feels completely lost. Reunited with her ‘baggage’, she greets it with grateful resignation. She cannot exist without it, but it weighs so heavily on her mind that it prevents her from enjoying the world around her. As spoken by the body of the magical Mamako Yoneyama.
Invisible Walls (B+W, 1969)
The proxemics of the the comfort zone - we do not like it when people get more than 18 inches from our bodies!
A Study in Choreography for the Camera (B+W, 1945)
A cognizant combination of dance language and filmic language.
Maya Deren was one of the most important avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century working and spending time with such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton, John Cage and Anaïs Nin. In A Study in Choreography Maya Deren's 16mm Bolex becomes a performer equal in significance to the star of this film, Talley Beattey. In the opening sequence Deren's camera rotates more than 360 degrees, scanning past the figure in movement. In this film Deren articulates the potential for transcendence through dance and ritual. Deren writes, “The movement of the dancer creates a geography that never was. With a turn of the foot, he makes neighbors of distant places" -Wendy Haslem
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, educational films, 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.
read more
Although the likes of Plato and Sitting Bull had already postulated as much, it wasn’t until the year 1964 a.d. that the wizard and media theorist Marshall McLuhan finally broke the spell the phonetic alphabet had placed on us with his famous statement, “the medium is the message.” Where we were once free-loving, non-questioning, less than consciously aware-of-its-effects-on-us users of this highly abstract form of symbolic representations of human-created phonemes, McLuhan’s words revealed that behind the curtain of written language was a strange and powerful truth. This terrifying and all too real reality, is at the heart of this program. Because let’s face it, for all we know, The Language of the Bees (1965) might stem from the same primordial linguistic root as our own. The shift from pictographic writing systems, as we see in Pictographs (1957), very well may have contributed to our ongoing and pervasive disconnection from the natural world. And really, are we still like those “blind” and less-than-aware inhabitants of Plato's Cave (1973), mistakenly taking the shadows on the wall for real creatures? Perhaps Oakland poet Mary-Louise Hansen, who will perform her epic poem, Walking in the Dreamland, as the live score to this highly bizarre portrayal of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave might help awaken us to the potential of reality! Drawn out of the depths of darkness, we shall walk in another dreamland, lugging our Baggage (1969) through the streets of San Francisco with the incredible mime Mamako Yoneyama, in this travelogue of the speaking body. And perhaps after this mix of dreamlike fantasy-land far-outedness, a dose of reality is in order, with an intimate home movie of a deaf family on summer vacation from the 1940's. Which reminds us that language of the hands and body is more universal than we may at first glance realize, and perhaps no film demonstrates this better than Hand Signals for Agriculture (1976), an elegant and comical dance of farmers and their machines. And perhaps no sonic score could better augment this gem than a live performance of Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters’s, Ursonate! Let us not forget, however, that no matter how conscious or unconscious we are to our speaking bodies, certain, Invisible Walls (1969), it turn out, are exactly 18 inches from and around our bodies, forming what is commonly known, as “the comfort zone” and about which we are highly expressive. To cap off our meditation on the written word, a quick lesson in High Speed Reading (1950s), and finally, to put a real period on this film screening about language, Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945). So come, discuss, engage, and speak with all your speaking body!
Date: Thursday, May 22nd, 2014 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to [email protected] or 415-558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Featuring:
Pictographs (Color, 1957)
Explore the written (and drawn) word before alphabets existed in this antique archaelogical short. The loveable and entertaining Dr. Frank Baxter leads us through an inviting lesson in the pictographic written language of American Indians.
Language of the Bees (Color, 1965)
Go beyond the buzz and explore the hum of the hive with the bee-master, entymologist Dr. Karl von Frisch. This vintage science short explains everything you've always wanted to know about the language of bees.
Plato's Cave (Color, 1973)
A super bizarre representation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, this part stop-motion and crazy costume film will be coupled with a reading of a segment from Plato's Phaedrus to ponder not only the awakening of the philosphical mind, but how the philosophical mind is molded by written and/or oral tradition!
Hand Signals for Agriculture (Color, 1976)
Farmers can also perform modern dance in the field. And thus communicate most effectively.
Baggage (B+W, 1969)
In a series of vignettes, a young girl wrestles with her burden. When she manages, however, to rid herself of it, she feels completely lost. Reunited with her ‘baggage’, she greets it with grateful resignation. She cannot exist without it, but it weighs so heavily on her mind that it prevents her from enjoying the world around her. As spoken by the body of the magical Mamako Yoneyama.
Invisible Walls (B+W, 1969)
The proxemics of the the comfort zone - we do not like it when people get more than 18 inches from our bodies!
A Study in Choreography for the Camera (B+W, 1945)
A cognizant combination of dance language and filmic language.
Maya Deren was one of the most important avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century working and spending time with such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton, John Cage and Anaïs Nin. In A Study in Choreography Maya Deren's 16mm Bolex becomes a performer equal in significance to the star of this film, Talley Beattey. In the opening sequence Deren's camera rotates more than 360 degrees, scanning past the figure in movement. In this film Deren articulates the potential for transcendence through dance and ritual. Deren writes, “The movement of the dancer creates a geography that never was. With a turn of the foot, he makes neighbors of distant places" -Wendy Haslem
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, educational films, 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.
show less
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275 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
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