Midnight movie at the Coolidge: The A/V Geeks: Weird and wild original 16mm classroom films
Last night, Friday, June 24, 2005, I went to a Midnight movie at the Coolidge Corner Theater, my favorite independent film theater in the Boston area. The program I saw was titled: The A/V Geeks: Weird and wild original 16mm classroom films. It was a two-part series with part 1 running Friday night and part 2 on Saturday.
According to the Coolidge web site, the event is described thusly:
Fri-Sat Jun 24-25
The A/V Geeks return to the Coolidge with more from their massive library of over 14,000 16mm educational and training films. These classics are filled with hidden celluloid riches - the same ones we (and our parents) used to watch in the darkened classrooms of our childhood. Come and join us for some of our favorites and, as always, a group film strip reading kicks off each show - and we'll have door prizes as well!.
Friday - BLACKBOARD BUNGLE. An evening of old school 16mm films about - interestingly enough - the hazards of going to school in the 1960s and 70s. Films include - Our Obligation, Lunchroom Manners, How Quiet Helps at School, And Then It Happened and more!
Saturday - KIDS AND KRITTERS "Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad." These school films feature children interacting with animals, including: Skipper Learns a Lesson, Frances and Her Rabbit, Safety with Animals, Kitty Cleans Up, Ro-Revus and more!
Skip Elsheimer, founder and curator of the AV Geeks educational film archive, has been busy over the last year. Besides doing shows in Houston, Austin and Dallas, Skip returns to the Anthology Film Archive. He's also been making his some of films freely available online for viewing and downloading at the Internet Archive.
What caught my attention about this program is the retro pop culture factor. Having gone to elementary school in the 1970s, I never really saw these types of films. However, I do have a vague recollection of a school assembly where a film similar to the ones shown tonight was shown. The film was about school bus safety. One segment demonstrated why you shouldn't stick your head out the window of the moving bus. The kid who did, hit his head on a tree branch. Instead, I saw many a filmstrip with the audio cassette soundtrack with the "beep" tone prompting the strip to be manually advanced one frame.
I was only interested in going to the Friday night show. So, I headed into Brookline around 10 PM. The good karma gods were riding shotgun tonight because I lucked out and got a spot, practically in front of the theater. Then, as I was getting a quick snack of two pizza slices at the Upper Crust Pizzeria, I got a free pizza. The pizza was an order that had never been picked up and if they didn't give the pizza away, they were going to throw it away. So, I opted to save the pizza from needless destruction. I got my ticket in advance, hung out for a bit at the Booksmith, an independent bookstore across the street and waited to go back to the theater to wait in line.
The program started at 12:00 Midnight and ended around 2:00 AM. The program consisted of a filmstrip followed by four films. The filmstrip and the first three films were made in the 1950's and the fourth film was made in the 1970s.
The filmstrip first filmstrip was titled "Living with Our Brothers and Sisters" (c.1950s) and it was about what it's like growing up with siblings. The filmstrip even had discussion questions at the end. The filmstrips were shown on the filmstrip projectors of our youth -- the kind you had to manually advance. Everyone in the audience got to read one frame. You'd be surprised how much innuendo can be conveyed into the most innocent statement with the appropriate intonation.
After the filmstrip, we saw four films:
The first film, "Lunchroom Manners" (c.1950s), and it was about proper manners and behavior in the school cafeteria. The main character was a puppet named Mr. Bungle. -- interestingly enough, this is where the band "Mr. Bungle" got its name from.
The following film, "Our Obligation" (c.1950s), was a propaganda film designed to "guilt" parents into supporting the school's desire to upgrade its fire safety system.
The next film, "How Quiet Helps at School" (c.1950s), was about how being quiet helps us and our fellow students learn effectively.
The final film, "And Then It Happened" (c.1970s), was about the dangers of not behaving while riding the school bus. Skip, had said it had a minor Hollywood star, actress Peggy Pope, who he identified at the end of the show as having been in the film 9 to 5.
After the show, Skip was selling DVD compilations from his collection. I even surprised him with a second minor Hollywood actor in the third film that he overlooked. The overlooked actor is Josh Mostel the son of actor Zero Mostel and I remember him from a late 1970's TV show called Delta house which was the continued misadventures of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity from the film Animal House. Mostel played Bluto's brother. Skip sort of remembered the show, as I described it, he then remembered Mostel as playing Bluto's brother, and seemed impressed as to having rediscovered this bit of trivia.
According to the Coolidge web site, the event is described thusly:
Fri-Sat Jun 24-25
The A/V Geeks return to the Coolidge with more from their massive library of over 14,000 16mm educational and training films. These classics are filled with hidden celluloid riches - the same ones we (and our parents) used to watch in the darkened classrooms of our childhood. Come and join us for some of our favorites and, as always, a group film strip reading kicks off each show - and we'll have door prizes as well!.
Friday - BLACKBOARD BUNGLE. An evening of old school 16mm films about - interestingly enough - the hazards of going to school in the 1960s and 70s. Films include - Our Obligation, Lunchroom Manners, How Quiet Helps at School, And Then It Happened and more!
Saturday - KIDS AND KRITTERS "Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad." These school films feature children interacting with animals, including: Skipper Learns a Lesson, Frances and Her Rabbit, Safety with Animals, Kitty Cleans Up, Ro-Revus and more!
Skip Elsheimer, founder and curator of the AV Geeks educational film archive, has been busy over the last year. Besides doing shows in Houston, Austin and Dallas, Skip returns to the Anthology Film Archive. He's also been making his some of films freely available online for viewing and downloading at the Internet Archive.
What caught my attention about this program is the retro pop culture factor. Having gone to elementary school in the 1970s, I never really saw these types of films. However, I do have a vague recollection of a school assembly where a film similar to the ones shown tonight was shown. The film was about school bus safety. One segment demonstrated why you shouldn't stick your head out the window of the moving bus. The kid who did, hit his head on a tree branch. Instead, I saw many a filmstrip with the audio cassette soundtrack with the "beep" tone prompting the strip to be manually advanced one frame.
I was only interested in going to the Friday night show. So, I headed into Brookline around 10 PM. The good karma gods were riding shotgun tonight because I lucked out and got a spot, practically in front of the theater. Then, as I was getting a quick snack of two pizza slices at the Upper Crust Pizzeria, I got a free pizza. The pizza was an order that had never been picked up and if they didn't give the pizza away, they were going to throw it away. So, I opted to save the pizza from needless destruction. I got my ticket in advance, hung out for a bit at the Booksmith, an independent bookstore across the street and waited to go back to the theater to wait in line.
The program started at 12:00 Midnight and ended around 2:00 AM. The program consisted of a filmstrip followed by four films. The filmstrip and the first three films were made in the 1950's and the fourth film was made in the 1970s.
The filmstrip first filmstrip was titled "Living with Our Brothers and Sisters" (c.1950s) and it was about what it's like growing up with siblings. The filmstrip even had discussion questions at the end. The filmstrips were shown on the filmstrip projectors of our youth -- the kind you had to manually advance. Everyone in the audience got to read one frame. You'd be surprised how much innuendo can be conveyed into the most innocent statement with the appropriate intonation.
After the filmstrip, we saw four films:
The first film, "Lunchroom Manners" (c.1950s), and it was about proper manners and behavior in the school cafeteria. The main character was a puppet named Mr. Bungle. -- interestingly enough, this is where the band "Mr. Bungle" got its name from.
The following film, "Our Obligation" (c.1950s), was a propaganda film designed to "guilt" parents into supporting the school's desire to upgrade its fire safety system.
The next film, "How Quiet Helps at School" (c.1950s), was about how being quiet helps us and our fellow students learn effectively.
The final film, "And Then It Happened" (c.1970s), was about the dangers of not behaving while riding the school bus. Skip, had said it had a minor Hollywood star, actress Peggy Pope, who he identified at the end of the show as having been in the film 9 to 5.
After the show, Skip was selling DVD compilations from his collection. I even surprised him with a second minor Hollywood actor in the third film that he overlooked. The overlooked actor is Josh Mostel the son of actor Zero Mostel and I remember him from a late 1970's TV show called Delta house which was the continued misadventures of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity from the film Animal House. Mostel played Bluto's brother. Skip sort of remembered the show, as I described it, he then remembered Mostel as playing Bluto's brother, and seemed impressed as to having rediscovered this bit of trivia.