Transformations By Light by Jim Davis

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, instead of primal, experiential value. In his 1953 manifesto, he called cinema “the only dynamic art,” for its ability to communicate contemporary existence and thought by an entirely new dimension. 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 and 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
Reflections no. 11 (1950), 6.5m
Through the Looking Glass: A Fantasy (1953), 8m
Evolution (1954), 8m
Writ in Water (1955), 8m
Death and Transfiguration (1961), 10m
Total Running Time: ~40m

Co-presented by the Cinema Studies Institute at Innis College and AD HOC, a collective dedicated to the presentation and exhibition of underground film and other obscure and unpopular forms of cinema.

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.

To get on the AD HOC mailing list, please contact jimshedden@gmail.com.