Join Ad Hoc on Friday, November 18, for a program of short films by Jim Davis!

Jim Davis (1901-1974) approached filmmaking as a tool through which we could discover new perceptions and intuitions. In his films, Davis animated light by reflective surfaces, building unfamiliar, alien spaces, disconnected from representation and symbolism. This program emphasizes Davis’s films on naturalistic subjects. For example, in Writ in Water, Davis’s film of a pond, reflecting buildings and trees, places the tender rippling of the pond under scrutiny, gradually assuming the familiar form of his abstract films. Death & Transfiguration, a late film, shows the interaction of his light refractions on the naked flesh of the human subject.

All films screening from 16mm prints!

PROGRAM Refractions no. 1 (1951), 6.5m Through the Looking Glass: A Fantasy (1953), 8m Evolution (1954), 8m Writ in Water (1955), 8m Death and Transfiguration (1961), 10m

TRT: ~40m

Co-sponsored by Innis College, the University of Toronto Cinema Studies Institute and the Ad Hoc film series.

Ad Hoc is a screening collective that seeks to reposition historical landmarks and buried treasures within the on-going tradition of experimental and other non-commercial modes of filmmaking, drawing on work from Toronto, throughout Canada, and internationally. Within these parameters, we aspire to diversity in programming, as well as to multimedia and interdisciplinary screening events that bring together varied communities.

AD HOC = Stephen Broomer, Madi Piller, Jim Shedden, Tess Takahashi, and Bart Testa.