Experimental Films - Deren

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Film Description

Including the following films: Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 15 min music by Teiji Ito / At Land 1944 silent 16 min / Ritual in Transfigured Time 1945-6, 16 min. 'Meshes of the Afternoon' was a genuine landmark which launched the American post-war avant-garde movement and has continued to influence experimental film-makers. Through a variety of disorientating creative devices, everyday objects acquire strangely poetic or troubling meanings, within a mysterious, surreal setting reminiscent of Bunuel and Cocteau, Deren herself is the film's dreamy protagonist.

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Review by Moira Sullivan on 7th February 2003

Six films by Maya Deren. Each time this brilliant filmmaker made a film, she added something new to the art instrument. For Maya Deren, the cardinal rule for making films was to create a new essence. Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land are cyclical journeys distinct though part of her \'dance film\' heritage: A Study in Choreography for Camera, Ritual in Transfigured Time. After these she went to Haiti to study the rituals of Voudoun. Meditation on Violence reveals her immersion in a system of Divine Principle. The Very Eye of Night symbolizes her awareness of \'the abyss\' where one plunged to the depth in the creative process. These six films take the viewer on a journey within. Everything you ever thought about the possibility of cinema comes true.

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Review by David Parkinson on 24th April 2003

Born Eleanora Derenkowsky in Kiev, Maya Deren was planning a book on dance when she met the Czech exile Alexander Hammid and developed instead, into the 'mother of the underground film.' The work contained in Experimental Films has a surreal quality that is intensified by her own ethereal presence. But it's her audacious use of camera that makes her exploration of space and time in Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), At Land (1944) and Rituals in Transfigured Time (1946) so mesmerising. The same enigmatic energy is evident in Dance Films, while her fascination with ancient ritual informs The Divine Horsemen, a study of Haitian cosmology that was posthumously released by her third husband, Teiji Ito, in 1977.

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Article - "David Lynch: A Maverick from Montana" by Mike McCahill
Friday 9th March 2007

2007 will be an especially good year for aficionados of David Lynch.
March alone sees his latest film Inland Empire arriving in cinemas, the re-release of 2002’s Mulholland Dr. as a Special Edition DVD with new, Lynch-approved chapter headings amon...  View article in full

Collections & Lists

This film is part of the following Film Collections

Best Short Film Compilations

Including: Anger 1, Anger 3, Big Stories, Small Flashes, Campfire, Charlie Chaplin - The Mutual Films (Vol 2), Charlie Chaplin - The Mutual Films (Vol. 1), Cinema 16: American Short Films, Cinema 16: British Short Films, Cinema 16: European Short Films, Experimental Films - Deren.

Female Directors

Including: A Ma Soeur, American Psycho, An Angel At My Table, Anatomy Of Hell, At Five In The Afternoon, Awakenings, Beau Travail, Beautiful Thing, Bend It Like Beckham, Better Than Chocolate.

Re:Voir - Superb Art Films

Including: Barbara Hammer - Sanctus, Berthold Bartosch - L Idee, Bill Morrison - 8 Films, Boris Lehman - A La Recherche du Lieu de ma Naissance, Boris Lehman - Lecon De Vie, Cinema Dada, Divine Horsemen: Living Gods Of Haiti, Dog Star Man - Stan Brakhage, Experimental Films - Deren, Fluxus - Fluxfilm Anthology.

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