Maya Deren art, form, film

about
• Maya Deren, independent
filmmaker in the 1940’s and
1950’s
• Noted as the major figure of the
experimental film movement after
World War II
• She co-founded the Creative Film
Organization in NYC, organized
to provide support for other
independent filmmakers and
worked devotedly to sustain
support for independent films.

The object itself is not
important. It is what is
associated with the
The symbolic value of object (context,
an image or object relationships, attributes,
can be illusory (based arrangements) that is
on illusion, not truly important. Deren
real), as in “the knife,” establishes these
featured in Meshes of relationships through the
the Afternoon (1943). form and technique of the
film.

At Land
• In At Land (1944), waves travel in
reverse
• The waves in reverse create a rift in
our “normal” space/time perception;
this allows us to see something
differently, something new is created
• This is “a reality that can only be
achieved by the temporal
manipulation of natural elements by
the camera as an art
instrument” (48)

Film Techniques
• In Meshes of the Afternoon,
Deren demonstrates the
individual as divided, and in At
Land (1944) the individual as
multiplied.
• In post-production, the elements
work to create a special sense of
perception in the spectator; the
use of slow motion, time-lapse,
reverse and inverse all work to
defy the spectator’s expectations
of logic, gravity, time and space.

Dancers, time, space
• Study in Choreography for Camera
(1945), Ritual in Transfigured Time
(1945-6), and The Very Eye of Night
(1952-59)
• She uses the rhythm of twenty-four frames
per second, the rhythm of light and
darkness and the rhythm of varying
speeds of filming to influence the spectator
– more than any symbolic meaning could.
• The intervals of light, speed, and space
create (in the spectator) a sense of
perception that is geared to an expectation
which lies outside the modes of any
particular experience, i.e., realist, sur-
realist, psychoanalytic, etc.

the power of images
• The films conveys the social matrix
within which the individual is
enmeshed, which holds just as much
import as does the field of natural
surroundings—of light, air, water and
earth.
• Deren believes in the power of film to
dislocate her spectators, temporarily,
from their systems of beliefs about the
world.
• She gives us alternative perceptions of
the organic, flexible “reality” of self and
society.

the power of images
• Submerged in the social matrix, the
individual will not perceive its
submerged condition.
• The power of Deren’s films is in the
power to dislocate the participant/
audience temporarily, however briefly,
from their systems of beliefs about the
world.
• She shows that “mind” itself is a vast
network of “social”
intercommunication, associations, and
relationships wherein the individual is
something like a transformer in an
electric power grid.