Date: Friday, January 16th, 2015 at 8:00PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00, limited seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilm.com
Admission: $10.00, limited seating RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilm.com
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Featuring:
Mom and Dad Can't Hear Me (Color, 1978, excerpt)
An all-star and heart-tugging ABC Afterschool Special. Rosanna Arquette stars as a young girl who must face her own shame at her deaf parents when they move to a new town and she fears the boy in drama club won't like her anymore. Directed by Afterschool mainstay Larry Elikann and co-starring Priscilla Pointer (Carrie, Blue Velvet) and Eric "Ben Walton" Scott.
When Your Parent Drinks Too Much (Color, 1987, excerpt)
An adaptation of the book ‘When Your Parent Drinks Too Much’ by Eric Ryerson. Through melodramatizations, the film reveals that most children of alcoholics feel isolated and alone, despite the fact that there are 10 million alcoholics in the United States. Features Alan Thicke (Yes, Robin Thicke's father as well as "Mike Seaver's" father from Growing Pains) as a host and emphasizes the three Cs for children of alcoholics - they didn’t ‘Cause’ the drinking, they can’t ‘Control’ the drinking and they can’t ‘Cure’ the drinking.
Tender Places (Color, 1985)A regional after school "For Kids' Sake" special adapted from 13-year-old Jason Brown's Young Playwright's Award-winning play. Ten-year-old Eric is torn between his divorced parents who vie for his affection. To test their love, Eric manipulates them, playing one against the other. Confused and angry, the boy refuses to accept the fact that his parents will not reconcile. Playing by an abandoned railroad station, Eric meets a kooky older woman (Jean Stapleton) who explains that although love can sometimes hurt it is an essential ingredient of life.
Catch a tender tidbit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO7gzsHQX-M
Parents: Who Needs Them? (Color, 1973)
One for the schlock history books, this bizarro educational primer features one of the most disturbing and creepy puppets we've ever found within these walls. Little Jimmy is a careless, sloppy and ungrateful boy who can't see all that his long-suffering parents do for him. That is, until his disgusting clown puppet comes to life, waves his magic wand over the young boy's face as he sleeps (not creepy at all), and turns little Jimmy invisible until he learns a valuable lesson in gratitude.
Three typical parent-child conflicts are dramatized: a girl’s mother nags her; a boy’s father regularly seems to criticize and argue with him. The narrator points out that behavior that gets attention will be repeated and suggests that these young people are, in effect, rewarding or reinforcing the undesirable behavior be responding to it. The narrator shows them how to change the situations by changing their responses and by understanding people’s basic needs. Each dramatized situation is replayed using the narrator’s suggestions, and shows a positive solution to the problem.
Parents are People from Free To Be...You and Me (Color, 1974)
Calypso crooner Harry Belafonte and Marlo attempt to alert children to the fact that their parents have dreams, jobs and other responsibilities besides their children and that the possibilities in employment aren't limited by gender stereotypes. Donning various garbs of kinds of employment-including Marlo wielding a jackhammer- this ditty also encourages kids to choose their own paths in life, not to let gender roles stand in the way.For the Early Birds:
Poor, unsuspecting Larry came home from his paper route in the morning to find his mother upset, surrounded by used glasses and ashtrays from his father’s party the night before. His mother tells him that dad’s leaving her,and he is soon forced to choose between them. What will Larry do? How should he feel? These questions and more will be discussed by guest interlocutor Beau Bridges.
Curator’s Biography
Kat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009. She has programmed over 100 shows at Oddball on everything from puberty primers to experimental animation.
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.