Maya Deren
Sep. 25th, 2018 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHave you felt a tragic lack of surrealist arthouse short films in your life recently? Well, look no further, because I have just discovered Maya Deren, who directed and starred in a series of strange, dreamy, silent black-and-white films in the 1940s and 50s.
Many of the films are on Youtube, in various stages of completeness, with various soundtracks and also with no soundtrack at all. It’s sort of irritating that it’s hard to tell what (if anything!) is the definitive version - for instance, the one soundtrack Youtube doesn’t have for “Meshes of the Afternoon” is the score written by Teiji Ito, Deren’s third husband - but it’s also strangely fitting, given the amorphousness of the films themselves.
Probably the purest experience is to watch one of the silent versions, but I found it almost impossible to pay attention without sound. Maybe they showed with an accompanist? Or maybe accompanists are not Art.
Also, let me be real with you, as interesting as I find Deren’s films in the abstract, I found Meshes of the Afternoon in particular a bit of a slog to actually watch. (That's a link to the version I watched on Youtube.) A woman goes into a house, and there’s a loaf of bread with a knife in it, and stairs, and curtains billowing out of the window, and she looks out of the window and sees a nun-like figure (who, we later discover, has a mirror for a face) walking away - and herself following… and then the loop starts over again, with variations as we go. It’s interesting afterward but not actually interesting to watch, if that makes sense.
But I did enjoy the other Deren that I watched, At Land. A woman (Deren, with the most fabulously wild curly hair) washes in from the sea, and climbs a driftwood structure - which somehow leads up to a fancy dining room table - and Deren crawls down the middle of it, between the diners, who don’t see her - till she reaches the end, where a man is playing chess (against himself? against the board? the pieces move by themselves; maybe the board is playing chess) and loses a pawn, which Deren then chases along the seaside and down a sunny lane and through a house till we’ve forgotten all about the pawn - until we come upon an oceanside chess game, and Deren snatches the pawn and races back up the beach, back through time, passing her past selves as she goes.
It really does feel like a dream - the seamless transitions between seemingly disparate settings, the way that it loops back on itself, and the way that it seems to mean something but never quite coheres around one meaning in particular. Quite an experience - which is what Deren wanted, of course.
Many of the films are on Youtube, in various stages of completeness, with various soundtracks and also with no soundtrack at all. It’s sort of irritating that it’s hard to tell what (if anything!) is the definitive version - for instance, the one soundtrack Youtube doesn’t have for “Meshes of the Afternoon” is the score written by Teiji Ito, Deren’s third husband - but it’s also strangely fitting, given the amorphousness of the films themselves.
Probably the purest experience is to watch one of the silent versions, but I found it almost impossible to pay attention without sound. Maybe they showed with an accompanist? Or maybe accompanists are not Art.
Also, let me be real with you, as interesting as I find Deren’s films in the abstract, I found Meshes of the Afternoon in particular a bit of a slog to actually watch. (That's a link to the version I watched on Youtube.) A woman goes into a house, and there’s a loaf of bread with a knife in it, and stairs, and curtains billowing out of the window, and she looks out of the window and sees a nun-like figure (who, we later discover, has a mirror for a face) walking away - and herself following… and then the loop starts over again, with variations as we go. It’s interesting afterward but not actually interesting to watch, if that makes sense.
But I did enjoy the other Deren that I watched, At Land. A woman (Deren, with the most fabulously wild curly hair) washes in from the sea, and climbs a driftwood structure - which somehow leads up to a fancy dining room table - and Deren crawls down the middle of it, between the diners, who don’t see her - till she reaches the end, where a man is playing chess (against himself? against the board? the pieces move by themselves; maybe the board is playing chess) and loses a pawn, which Deren then chases along the seaside and down a sunny lane and through a house till we’ve forgotten all about the pawn - until we come upon an oceanside chess game, and Deren snatches the pawn and races back up the beach, back through time, passing her past selves as she goes.
It really does feel like a dream - the seamless transitions between seemingly disparate settings, the way that it loops back on itself, and the way that it seems to mean something but never quite coheres around one meaning in particular. Quite an experience - which is what Deren wanted, of course.
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Date: 2018-09-25 04:51 pm (UTC)That is I believe the only Maya Deren I have actually seen, but I loved it. I'm glad so much of her is available on YouTube!
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Date: 2018-09-26 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-26 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-26 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-26 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-27 01:39 am (UTC)