Maya Deren
(1917 - 1961, Ukraine)
By Līva Pētersone
Figuratively speaking, Maya Deren could be seen as a bridge joining the old European avant-garde (surrealism, dada, montage experiments) and its continuum in America. One of the most prominent authors in 1940’s/1950’s avant-garde film, Deren famously said she made her films on what Hollywood spent on lipstick. She was, among other pursuits, a dancer, choreographer, photographer, writer, avant-garde film theoretician, and she still remains one of the most enigmatic figures in film history. Her works are formalist experiments, densely charged with mysticism, psychoanalytic allusions, elements of surrealism and sensuality, boldly opposing the cornerstone of mainstream cinema – an entertaining, consecutive story. Her pioneering provocations in art testify to her ability to create something which would gain wider resonance only much - 20 years - later in the form of feminist agenda. Deren’s work is also a paragon of auteur cinema – a notion which became defined and institutionalized with the rise of a wave of certain men – film critics and directors – in 1950’s /1960’s France.
The three films in the program - Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, 14’), At Land (1944, 15’), Ritual in Transfigured Time, (1946, 15’) - possibly form the essence of her filmmaking, offering a time-wise concentrated, but in terms of the film language, experimentation and visual imagery dazzling view – even from a contemporary perspective – into a truly avant-garde form of cinema.
Tuesday October 22, KSuns, 18.00-19.00
Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943, 14 min, 16 mm
Ritual in Transfigured Time, 1946, 10 min, 16 mm
At Land, 1944, 15 min, 16 mm