Two programmes of historically important shorts by Maya Deren, the Mother of the trance film who worked completely outside the commercial film industry and made her own inner experience the centre of her films.
Programme 1
Divine Horseman: The Living Gods of Haiti
(55 mins) 194753
Deren never completed this film. It was edited by Teiji (her husband) and Cherel Ito after her death. Comprising documentary footage of Haitian rituals and dances, it nonetheless defeated her attempts to make the film she had intended. Instead she transformed her experiences into a book of the same title. The film is a sad trace of the film she grappled with and it stands as a testament to her artistic integrity.
Programme 2
Meshes In The Afternoon
(14 mins) 1943
Deren began making films in the early 1940s. In these striking psychodramas Deren often places herself in the frame, navigating a path through anxiety-laden Freudian environs, dreamscapes of the seemingly unphotographable. In her first and most famous work, a woman (Deren) dreams within dreams about suicide, about a phallic attack by her mate (Hammid), and about inanimate objects that assume threatening aspects. This seminal work gave birth to the American avant-garde film movement of the postwar era.
Meditation Of Violence
(10 mins) 1948
The subject of this meditation is the movements that have been in traditional training usage in two schools of Chinese boxing the Wu-Tang and the Shao-Lin for several centuries. The Wu-Tang school of boxing derives from philosophical concepts in the Book of Changes. The emphasis is upon life as an ongoing metamorphosis, a continuous alternation between negative and positive.
Ritual In Transfigured Time
(14 mins) 1946
With Deren, Rita Christiani, Frank Westbrook, Anais Nin. In this film Deren weaves together her interest in dance with the exploration of myth and symbol. Dance becomes a metaphor for courtship and sexual union. The film is rich in mythological references, to which the film-maker adds her own layer of meaning.