San Francisco Bay Area Historical
Sun 7 September, 12 Noon

RENOIR CINEMA
The Brunswick, London, WC1N 1AW
Tube: Russell Square
Buses: 7, 59, 68, 91, 168, 188

San Francisco has long been a hotbed of wide-open, full-speed, über-inspired originality and creative outpourings. Whether it be psychedelia, revelling in the founding moments of computing or crash testing the insanest ideas on an open-minded audience, there are a lot of films out there that could have only been made in San Francisco. This programme comes straight out of the private collection of SF animation legend, Karl Cohen. This show will be a wild, wild ride.

Pre-Historic Poultry
Willis O’Brien
USA, 1917, 3’00
A fascinating insight into the earliest days of puppet animation. One of the first animated films made in San Francisco, it was actually animated on the rooftop of the cable car building on Mission St using the sun as its primary light source. Wills O’Brien went on to make the original King Kong and is regarded as the Godfather of special effects.

Crusader Rabbit
Jay Ward
USA, 1950, 4’00
A fully crazy early SF animated TV series featuring one of the original animated TV characters. This nutty little guy was the precursor to Ward’s ultimate creation, Rocky And Bulwinkle.

Quasi At The Quackadero
Sally Cruikshank
USA, 1975, 10’00
“Seargent Pepper” meets “Metropolis” – kind of! An incredible gallery of ultra bizarre characters, a strange surreal sideshow, a poster film for the psychedelic aesthetic. All that and much more. An early film from an animator who went on to create an extremely important body of work as well as animating for TV shows such as The Twilight Zone and Sesame St.

Thank You Mask Man
Jeff Hale
USA, 1968, 8’00
Jeff Hale went on to create a substantial body of work with the National Film Board of Canada but not before animating this true classic. It is an animated version of a side-splittingly hilarious Lenny Bruce monologue that tracks the mindset of the Lone Ranger who, having just saved a town from disaster, decides to accept “the Indian” as a gift from the grateful inhabitants.

Malice In Wonderland
Vince Collins
USA, 1982, 5’00
Definitely not one for the kiddies. A scabrously sexual, super surreal retelling of a much beloved story that somehow includes a girl, a rabbit and a lot of colour.

Ballet Frenetic
Seth Olitzky
USA, 5’00
San Francisco was home to some of the very first people who experimented with computers to extend the boundaries of animation. To the modern eye, ‘Ballet Frenetic’ probably looks like something that could have been zapped up on a Commodore 64 but as an early pioneer Olitzky laid down many of the rules that are being used to this day.

Paradisia
Marcy Page
USA, 1987, 15’00
One of the first films by Marcy Page from the national Film Board of Canada, made when she was living in the Bay Area at the beginning of her career. Beautifully drawn, ‘Paradisia’ is a pastel extravaganza of sensuous, flowing imagery.

^ top