A cinematic adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book XI, lines 146–193

Midas & the Ass’s Ears is Throughline Film Foundation’s inaugural short film. It is a source-based cinematic adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses 11.146–193, preserving the episode’s narrative structure and central imagery while introducing original dialogue and dramatic material for the screen.

On Mount Tmolus, Pan and Apollo compete to determine whose music possesses the greater artistic value. Pan plays the reed pipes; Apollo plays the lyre. When Tmolus declares Apollo the victor, Midas disputes the judgment. He argues that Pan’s music possesses life, feeling and a connection to the earth that Apollo’s technical perfection lacks. Apollo responds by transforming Midas’s ears into those of an ass.

Where Ovid’s narrator presents Midas’s preference as evidence of deficient judgment, the film opens that judgment to examination. Pan and Apollo come to represent two contrasting conceptions of art: emotional vitality and natural expression on one side, and formal beauty, precision and control on the other. By giving Midas a developed reason for his choice, the adaptation asks who possesses the authority to determine artistic value, and what happens when an individual refuses to accept an officially sanctioned judgment.

The film also expands Ovid’s brief account of the servant who discovers Midas’s ears. Reimagined as a barber, he is ordered by the king to conceal what he has seen. Unable to share the secret even with his wife, he whispers it into a hole in the earth. Reeds eventually grow from the place where the words were buried and repeat the truth whenever the wind passes through them.

Developed with scholarly guidance from classical consultant C. W. (Toph) Marshall, the project places a defined passage of classical Latin literature in dialogue with contemporary cinematic practice. Through public exhibition and accompanying source information, it is intended to deepen public appreciation of classical literature, adaptation and film as an art form.

Screenplay
Sebastian Belmont

Classical Consultant
C. W. (Toph) Marshall, PhD
Professor of Greek, University of British Columbia

Project Partners

Matsqui Blue Farm
Aldor Acres Family Farm
Vancity - Vancouver City Savings Credit Union