Maya Deren: American Experimental Filmmakers

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Maya Deren was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren is a multi-genre artist who is primarily known as a filmmaker but who also worked in dance, poetry, and film theory, paid special attention to the materials involved in film and filmmaking. Her films include multiple images of fabric and textiles, and her writings consistently note the physical components involved in filmmaking, the cameras instrument, the cinematic equipment, and the bodies of the actors.

For my final essay, I chose Meshes of the Afternoon. Aside from being Maya Deren’s most successful film. A mesh of the Afternoon is a short experimental film directed by wife and husband team, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. The film's narrative is circular, and repeats a number of psychologically symbolic images, including a flower on along driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper-like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean.

The reason why this film is so strong is because this is about herself. Maya Deren came up with her ideas from personal experience, feelings and her emotions. "The film image whose intangible reality consists of lights and shadows beamed through the air and caught on the surface of a silver screen comes to us as the reflection of another world"(Deren 2005e). This statement conveys film as not only magical and otherworldly but material: even though it possesses an “intangible reality," it is the product of objects moving in space. She did this through her dream sequences, multiple selves, and the artistic use of time and space.

Deren exploits this "contrast" between...

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...utube.com/watch?v=4S03Aw5HULU http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225773?&Search=yes&searchText=Maya&searchText=Deren&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DMaya%2BDeren%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&prevSearch=&item=5&ttl=1940&returnArticleService=showFullText http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026556?&Search=yes&searchText=Maya&searchText=Deren&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DMaya%2BDeren%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&prevSearch=&item=2&ttl=1940&returnArticleService=showFullText http://www.jstor.org/stable/778529?&Search=yes&searchText=Maya&searchText=Deren&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DMaya%2BDeren%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=1940&returnArticleService=showFullText http://www.entertainmentscene360.com/index.php/meshes-of-the-afternoon-meshes-afternoon-maya-deren-deren-maya-15109/

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