UPDATE: We regret to announce that for medical reasons, Jodie Mack is no longer able to make it to Toronto in person. Please note that the "Capture Session" on March 7, 2:15pm-4pm in UC179 has been CANCELLED. The event will be replaced by an Animation Lecture and Workshop in IN222, from 2:15pm-4pm, which Prof. Mack will host virtually.
The Cinema Studies Graduate Student Union (CSGSU) is excited to share the poster and full schedule of Formations, the 2026 Annual Cinema Studies Graduate Student Conference. The conference will take place from March 6th-7th at Innis College, with our keynote speaker, the experimental filmmaker and animator Prof. Jodie Mack of Dartmouth College.
The conference events are free and open to all. But we would especially like to highlight that Prof. Mack's keynote address on March 6th, 4pm at Innis Town Hall, will include a program of experimental shorts presented with 3D diffraction glasses.
On March 7th, at 2:15pm, we will also be hosting a capture session with Prof. Mack at University College (UC179). (Please note: attendees of this session are recommended to wear dark-colored clothing.)
We would like to acknowledge the gracious support of various University of Toronto sponsors, including the Cinema Studies Institute, the Jackman Humanities Institute, the Department of East Asian Studies, the Department of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Art History, the Department of English, the Centre for the Study of the United States at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, the Centre for Comparative Literature, the Centre for Ethics, the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, as well as the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, and the Department of English at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.
Co-chairs: Jixin Jia; Lawrence Neal Garcia
Organizing Team: Avneet Sharma, Hayden Bytheway, Janelle Rowsell, Mwanzi Johns, Owen Eccleshall, Parth Pant, Thomas Quist
Event Program
March 6
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| 2:00 - 4:00 pm |
Registration
Innis College Lobby
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| 4:00 - 6:30 pm |
Keynote Address with Special 3D Diffraction Screening Program
Q&A Moderators: Prof. James Cahill and Srijita Banerjee
Films provided courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada, Amy Kravitz, Canyon Cinema, and Six Pack Films
Innis Town Hall
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| 6:30 - 8:00 pm |
Welcome Reception
Innis College, Second Floor Lounge
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March 7
|
| 9:00 - 9:30 am |
Coffee & Welcome
Innis College, Second Floor Lounge
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| 9:30 - 11:00 am |
Panel 1a | IN222
Queer Formalism
Moderated by Sam Reimer
- Avneet Sharma, University of Toronto, Forms of Tennis, Forms of Sex
- Pate Duncan, University of Wisconsin–Madison, “We Need to Break the Nose of Every Beautiful Thing”: Luca Guadagnino’s Roughened Form
- Ditta Demeter, University of Cambridge, Truth as a Shimmering Mirage: Bisexual Formation(s) Against Ideological Binaries in Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Panel 1b | IN312
Grids, Maps, Rules
Moderated by Joshua Cabrita
- William Wells, University of Illinois, Chicago, Rules to Die By: Contemporary Horror and the Impossible Ruleset
- Leonardo Strano, University of Cambridge, Disfiguring the grid: how digital cinema exposes modernist paradoxes of form-making to challenge late capitalism’s imaging strategies
- Jen Racoosin, Independent Scholar, Mapping Totality in the Digital Age: Searching (2018) and Missing (2023)
|
| 11:15 am - 1:00 pm |
Panel 2a | IN222
Approaching Censorship
Moderated by Janelle Rowsell
- B. Dalia Hatalova, University of Toronto, Golddiggers from 1932 to 2025: A Transhistorical Approach to Censorship Research
- Stephen Istvan Dragos, King’s College London & University of Northampton, Approaching the Unapproachable: The Material Artefacts of the 1980s Romanian Commercial Film Poster
- Meidi Quan, City University of Hong Kong, The Resilient Formation of the “Minjian”: The Transformation and Paradox of Publicness in China’s Post-Independent Film Festivals (Virtual Presentation)
- Hannah Fleisch, University of California, Santa Barbara, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Special Report: National Address, Archives, and Media Historiography (Virtual Presentation)
Panel 2b | IN312
Aesthetic Theories
Moderated by Thomas Quist
- Josh Cabrita, University of Toronto, Deleuze and the Conditions of Successive Time in the Cinema
- Evyn Armstrong, University of Southern California, The Face of Muppet: On the Performance of Puppets
- Winter Faddick, University of Toronto, The Mechanical Chimera: Animal Components in Walter Benjamin’s Writing and Motifs
- Nikole McGregor, University of Toronto, Virtual Sublimity: Aesthetic Formations at the Threshold of Perceptual Contradictions
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| 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
Lunch
Innis College, Second Floor Lounge
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| 2:15 - 4:00 pm |
Capture Session with Jodie Mack
University College, Room UC179
Animation Lecture and Workshop, Innis College, Room IN-222
|
| 4:15 - 5:30 pm |
Panel 3a | IN222
City and Nation
Moderated by Aaisha Salman
- Zichen Liang, University of British Columbia, Where the World Breaks: Anta’s (No)Presence and Anti-Formation in A Thousand Suns
- Yifei Sun, University of Cambridge, Temporal Ruptures and Queer Formations: Re-reading the Zishu Tradition in Intimates (1997) as City Allegory (Virtual Presentation)
- Melika Motevalli Poor, Université de Montréal, Archiving Silence: Dislocated Geographies, Lost Women, and the Invisible Beginnings of Iranian Cinema
Panel 3b | IN312
Computational Images
Moderated by Alexandra Neufeldt
- Jung-Ah Kim, Queen’s University, Tactile Algorithms: Weaving the Moving Image
- Andy Lee, University of Toronto, Burning the Forest to Kill the Fox: Six Days in Fallujah and the Politics of Military Simulation
- Yves Chang, Independent Scholar, On My Screen: Computer Vision & User Intimacies in Ninajirachi’s “Infohazard”
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| 6:00 - 9:00 pm |
Closing Reception & After-Party
Duke of York - 39 Prince Arthur Ave.
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