Cinema Studies Institute

Innis College and the Cinema Studies Institute remember late Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer (1975-2023) with a special screening of his first feature, Nurse.Fighter.Boy, which was inspired by his sister’s struggle with sickle cell anemia and nominated for 10 Genie Awards. Following the screening, a distinguished panel of Charles’s collaborators and friends will reflect on his impactful life and… Continue Reading Remembering Charles Officer: Nurse.Fighter.Boy Screening

In her most recent film Elegies (2023), Ann Hui documents Hong Kong’s poetry through several of its leading lights. Although the film focuses on living poets, its English-language title points to a poetic form defined by loss and retrospection. In exploring Hui’s mobilization of elegy as that which connects poetry and cinema, this talk develops a critical… Continue Reading Disappearing Acts: Reassessing Hong Kong’s Cinema of Nostalgia Talk by Jean Ma

AD HOC #57: The Body in Film Innis College, Room 222 March 20, 2024, 7PM Free admission Trailer: www.vimeo.com/923323883 This program features erotic and cine-dance films that reshape the actions of the body on screen. In Hilary Harris’s 9 Variations on a Dance Theme (1966-67), Bettie de Jong performs a dance for the camera as it… Continue Reading Ad Hoc presents: Fuses, 9 Variations on a Dance Theme, The Golden Positions

AD HOC #58: Chumlum / Early Abstractions Innis College, Room 222 March 27, 2024, 7PM Free admission Trailer: www.vimeo.com/923360483 This program features two remarkable films that define the heterogeneous nature of underground cinema. Chumlum (1963) was made by the American absurdist filmmaker Ron Rice, who passed before his time leaving only a handful of masterful, diverse films. Of… Continue Reading Ad Hoc presents: Chumlum + Early Abstractions Numbers 1-5, 7 & 10

Speakers Alaine Hutton Dylan Rykse Theresa Wang Scott Richmond (moderator) Description Careers after Cinema Studies is our annual Cinema Studies Institute alumni panel in which professionals in the film industry and beyond share their experience and knowledge with students. This year's panel will feature Alaine Hutton, Dylan Rykse and Theresa Wang. Alaine Hutton is part of a performing/writing/directing/designing duo… Continue Reading Careers after Cinema Studies 2024

Through the story of Annah la Javanaise, a trafficked 13-year-old girl who was found wandering the streets of Paris in 1893 and who became the maid and model of painter Paul Gauguin, Fatimah Tobing Rony introduces theories of visual biopolitics to examine those who are allowed to live and those who are allowed to die,… Continue Reading How Do We Look? Resisting Visual Biopolitics

A lunch talk for Prof. Bliss Cua Lim's newly released book, The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema. Prof. Lim will give a talk followed by a discussion with respondent, Jasmine Trice. A chapter will be pre-circulated to attendees. Seating is limited so please register early and for access to the pre-circulated paper. The contours of Philippine cinema’s archival… Continue Reading CSI presents: Archival Power and Philippine Vernacular Audiences: the Binisaya Film Movement

The talk focuses on the “animistic” power of certain living forms, in particular plants, which are apparently inert (or rather, inert to the naked eye) but can be animated by different cinematic techniques. I will analyze certain filmic forms such as time-lapse and close-up as used by the British naturalist and documentary filmmaker Frank P.… Continue Reading CSI presents: Cinema as Time Machine: Animation and Devitalization Through Time-Lapse and Slow Motion