CounterCorp Film Festival multi-media benefit event: "Public Image Ltd."

Other Cinema impresario and cult film curator Craig Baldwin emerges from his subterranean lair and film archives to serve up a medley of retro "corporate identity" loops and industrial propaganda excerpts and shorts from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s -- complete with stentorian voice-overs, howlingly earnest dialogue delivered by characters firmly bound in their gender roles, and more rayon than you shake a martini stirrer at -- in an atmosphere best described as "guerilla theater."

Among the jaw-droppers are Delco's "That's the Way It Is", General Motor's "Our American Crossroads", IBM's early computer testimonial "Piercing the Unknown", and Oscar Meyer's "Because We Care" — plus a special treat from Rick Prelinger's unique collection of cinema ephemera.

The overt corporate proselytizing and homogeneity can seem startlingly surreal and unintentionally funny today, but these were the precursors of the modern infomercial, and served much the same purpose.

So come on down to the ATA on May 13 to see the fossilized remains of The Future That Never Was, and the original inspiration for all of those wicked parodies of decidedly dis-informative "educational" films on 'The Simpsons' (featuring failed B-movie actor and booming-voiced host Troy McClure).

DJ Mindwrecker, host of his own show on SF cable TV's public access Channel 29, will be spinning tunes and projecting images at various intervals throughout the show, and adult beverages and tasty treats will be available from a CounterCorp-hosted bar.

Adult beverages and tasty treats from a CounterCorp-hosted bar. Tickets $5-10, available online at http://virtuous.com/events/countercorp/, and at the door one hour before show.

Proceeds benefit the 2006 CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival in October. For more information about this event or the festival itself, visit http://www.countercorp.org. Hope to see you there!