“Friday On My Mind: Beat Group & British Invasion on Film” September 18, 2009

Event: “Friday On My Mind: Beat Group & British Invasion on Film” Guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of 1960’s beat groups on rare16mm film; Australia’s The Easybeats, the Dave Clark 5, and trove of Beatl*s footage to feast your eyes and ears upon. Highlights include: The truly rare “Easy Come, Easy Go With The Easybeats”; “A Mod Odyssey”, documenting the making of Yellow Submarine; “ “The Dave Clark 5”, a color Warner-Pathé newsreel; “The Beatl*s Come To Town”, another Warner-Pathé newsreel in color and widescreen, “Braverman’s Condensed Cream of Beatl*s” and “The Sixties”, plus lots more Beatl*s newsreel footage and a few surprises! Back to the Sixties!!
Date: Friday, September 18, 2009 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or info@oddballfilm.com
Web: http://www.flarerecord.com/?p=315

“Friday On My Mind”
Beat Group & British Invasion on Film
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, September 18, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare films showcasing some of the best and brightest of the British Invasion and Beat Groups of the 1960’s. Youtube is great, but nothing compared to original celluloid and the silver screen! Rare newsreels featuring The Beatl*s, The Dave Clark 5, and a “lost” film of the Australian mod-beat-powerpop The Easybeats, along with a kinestatic short history of the decade (Charles Braverman’s The Sixties). It’s gonna be a twistin’, stompin’, shimmy a go-go shindig!
Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.

Films Include:

“Easy Come, East Go With The Easybeats” (B&W, 1967)
Beyond rare film focused on the great Australian Beat combo the Easybeats during their time in England. Director Peter Clifton went on to make the Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains The Same and many other music films and videos, but this was his first. Apparently this film has been lost since 1970, and neither Clifton nor Producer Glen Baker has been able to track it down. Oddball’s copy is mostly intact, with some great performances (alas- lip synced), screaming fans, in the studio working on the song “Heaven and Hell”, lots of goofing, and pre-MTV “videos” of “Who’ll Be The One”, “Loch Lomond” (unreleased), “Saturday Night”, and their smash hit “Friday On My Mind”. The film was originally released with the whimsical title “Somewhere Between Heaven and Woolworths”, then changed to the more prosaic Easy Come, Easy Go. A must see for all Easybeats fans!!

“The Beatl*s Come To Town” (Color, 1963, Techniscope)
Warner- Pathé produced newsreel short of the Beatles with fans, hamming it up and performing “She Loves You” and “Twist and Shout” on stage. Beautiful Technicolor and shot in widescreen Techniscope- will be shown utilizing our new Cinemascope lens.

“The Dave Clark 5” (Color, 1964)
Following the success of their special Beatl*s short, Warner- Pathé jumped on the Tottenham-based Dave Clark 5 as their main rival (hard to believe today). More sumptuous color and fan pandemonium as the 5 perform “Bits and Pieces” and “Glad All Over”. Great stuff, but Tottenham and the DC5 didn’t stand a chance against Liverpool and the Fab Four.

“A Mod Odyssey” (b+w, 1968)
Short promotional film for Yellow Submarine has behind the scenes footage offering insight to its production and lysergic inspiration. Plenty of Beatl*s footage, hamming it up per usual.

“Braverman’s Condensed Cream of Beatl*s” (color, 1973)
Oscar-winning short traces the history of the Beatl*s utilizing a fast moving collage of stills, clips, art and album covers edited to the beat of their brilliant music. This non-narrative film showcases the flip, exuberant 60s to the end of the sober, socially conscious decade as we watch airport mob scenes, madcap press conferences, records, concerts, books, posters and movies, all tumble past in a dizzy spasm of bliss.

“The Sixties” (color, 1970)
Another Charles Braverman production that utilizes the kinestatic technique to profile the decade that produced the Beatl*s and the British Invasion (and some less savory things like the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon). Made in 1970 without the benefit of decades of hindsight, but also without much revisionism.

Plus much, MUCH more TBA at showtime!!

Bonus: Paul is Dead - TURN ME ON DEAD MAN Listen to “Revolution 9” played backwards in its entirety: http://kingtet.com/number9.htm

Curator Biography:
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave. A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro and Victoria Theatre.

Some Upcoming Programs:
Saturday, Sept. 26 – “Lost Animation” (An occasional series, from obscure to classic)
Saturday, Oct. 3 – “Son of Trailer Trash” (A night of film trailers)
Sat., Oct. 10 – “Weirdsville 7” (Oddities from the Archives)
Fri., Oct. 16 – “Crazy Cats 2: The Cat Came Back” (Cat films- all new program)

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.

Official Website: http://www.flarerecord.com/?p=315