Lamplightings

Five Films by Maya Deren
Directed by Maya Deren

Sunday, January 12, 1 pm

Free, first come, first served

One of the major figures of the cinematic avant-garde, choreographer and filmmaker Maya Deren’s oeuvre defined a generation of underground filmmaking. Crafting only a handful of films during her troublingly short life, Deren utilized the 16mm camera, which had just recently become available for non-professional use, to craft a prophetic vision of visual art in modernity. The resulting works are entrancing and haunting, reconstructing time and space in order to produce a cinematic language that abides only by its own logic. This program provides a survey of Deren’s major filmic works completed during her lifetime. 1943-48, U.S., 16mm and DCP, 62 minutes.

Meshes of the Afternoon

A large flower, the silhouette of a figure briskly walking away, a house key, a bread knife, a telephone receiver resting off the hook, and a spinning phonographic turntable define the shifting functional elements in Meshes of the Afternoon from which the film’s evolving, malleable construct – the fragile and tenuously interconnected mesh of actual and perceived reality – is intriguingly (and ingenuously) mapped. 1943, U.S., 16mm, 14 minutes.

At Land

Another of Maya Deren’s dream-like films, the message which At Land transmits to and its main subject rests on the idea of the mutability of a personality. 1944, U.S., 16mm, 15 minutes.

A Study in Choreography for Camera

It was in Maya Deren’s third project, A Study in Choreography for Camera, that Deren fully realized her vision of freeing the human body from the confines of theatrical—and actual—space. 1945, U.S., 16mm, 4 minutes.

Ritual in Transfigured Time

In Maya Deren’s Ritual in Transfigured Time we have gestures that invite us to move into step with them, abandoning the comfort of the known and giving ourselves over to so many strange partners. 1946, U.S., 16mm, 15 minutes.

Meditation on Violence

Just as the actual movements of Chinese boxing are a physical statement of certain metaphysical concepts, so the film Meditation on Violence is, in filmic terms, itself a statement of those same concepts, employing the physical movements as only one of the visual means. 1949, U.S., DCP, 12 minutes.

Total running time: 62 minutes