PRESCREEN: Come early this Wednesday, at 8pm, for some shorts by MAYA DEREN! A Russian emigre to the US, Maya rubbed elbows and collaborated with the likes of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, becoming one of the most important American filmmakers and promoters of the avant-garde in her time! A dancer, a writer, a theorist, an renowned expert on Voodoo, an all around unstoppable avant-garde force who lived entirely on coffee, cigarettes, and amphetamine shots! • MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943) 14m: Recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film, Meshes is the first narrative film in avant-garde American film, which critics have said took on an autobiographical tone - for women and the individual. The film can be described as an expressionistic trance film, full of dramatic angles and innovative editing. It investigates the ephemeral ways in which the protagonists unconscious mind works and makes connections between objects and situations. • THE WITCHS CRADLE (1943) 12m: A surrealist film showing repetitive imagery involving a string fashioned in a bizarre, almost spiderweb-like pattern over the hands of several individuals, most notably an unnamed young woman (Pajorita Matta) and an elderly gentleman (Marcel Duchamp). The film also shows a shadowy darkness and people filmed at odd angles, an exposed human heart, and other occult symbols and ritualistic imagery intended to evoke an unsettling aura. • RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1946) 15m: Deren discussed in An Anagram that she felt special attention should be given to unique possibilities of time and that the form should be ritualistic as a whole. Ritual in Transfigured Time explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual, looking at the details as well as the bigger ideas of the nature and process of change. • THE VERY EYE OF THE NIGHT (1958) 15m: A collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School. A shimmering constellation of stars established the background for negative images of figures resembling Greek Gods superimposed on and magically transported along the milky way. Deren called it her ‘ballet of night’, an ethereal dance within a nocturnal space that focused on the spectacle rather than the narrative.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 20:56:25 +0000
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