Oddball/s monthly Strange Sinema series celebrates its 5th anniversary tonight, January 24th, with a program that, as usual, will be highly unusual, involving the rare, the forgotten, the the quirky, the repurposed, the never-intended-to-be-seen, and the distinctly odd indeed. Stephen Parr, curator of the 50,000-film archive Oddball Films and friend of the show, drops by to talk about building a career via following his obsession with rare, orphaned, and abandoned films & film scraps. Now in demand with numerous directors and institutions internationally, he explains his commitment to creating "a one-time only experience for audiences [screenngs] rather than a product [the DVD collections he won't make]..
Among the films in tonight's program discussed are the trippy Match Your Moos [a 7-min. '60's ad for psychedelic refrigerator covers!]; Airplane Wing Tests (1960s) with music from Bill Frisell; the Oscar-winning 'beatnik' animation about the development of music, Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom (1953); the surreal Le Monde du Schizophrene (The World of the Schizophrenic, 1969) was produced by. . . Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, manufacturers of LSD?and The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much. Stephen recounts discovering Carson Davidson/s Monty-Pythonesque Help, My Snowman is Burning Down (1964, Gerry Mulligan & Bob Brookmeyer score), and his subsequent contacts with Davidson.

Playlist:
Think - Bill Frisell
Match Your Mood [excerpt, by Jam Handy Films]
score from Le Monde du Schizophrene [excerpt, incl. samping from Brubeck]
Sonic Oddities - Stephen Parr [excerpts]
Good Dog, Happy Man - Bill Frisell
Egg Radio - Bill Frisell