Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary

AD HOC #56: David Holzman’s Diary
Free admission

Filmmaker Jim McBride offers this portrait of David Holzman (L.M. Kit Carson) as an experiment in fictionalized autobiographical documentary. Holzman, a New York cinephile anticipating the draft in the summer of 1967, may be a doomed man, grist for the mill of the war in Vietnam, but he is also a passionate cinephile whose preoccupation with cinema verité—in this case, very much staring into the quotidian abyss of his existence—reveals a great deal about the psyche of the underground film. He becomes an avatar for a then-emerging generation of youth as concerned with capturing the world around them as they were with looking inward, inevitably frustrated in their search for an authentic life.

Program:
David Holzman’s Diary (1967, 73 mins.)

AD HOC aims to rethink what an experience of cinema can be. We seek 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, Bart Testa.

AD HOC is made possible thanks to the sponsorship of Innis College and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. AD HOC would like to thank James Cahill, Denise Ing, Charlie Keil, and the staff of Innis College and the Cinema Studies Institute.