Maya Deren – Experimental Films

“My purpose is to make an experimental motion picture (the physical scope of which is subject to material conditions) in which I will attempt to develop a cinematic art form, originating in the creative potentialities of the movie camera itself, and freed from the influence of other artistic idioms, such as literature, theater, the plastic and pictorial arts.” – Maya Deren, 1944

“The cinema of Maya Deren delivers us from the studios: it presents our eyes with physical facts which contain profound psychological meaning; it beats out within our hearts or upon our hearts a time which alternates, continues, revolves, pounds, or flies away…. One escapes from the stupidity of make-believe. One is in the reality of the cinematic fact, captured by Maya Deren at that point where the lens cooperates as a prodigious discoverer.” – Le Corbusier 1945

“She is the mother of us all.” – Stan Brakhage

Contents

MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON 1943 music by Teiji Ito, 1959, b/w, 15′ With Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. Grand Prix International, avant-garde section, Cannes 1947

AT LAND 1944 silent, b/w, 16′ With Deren, Hammid, Hella Heyman, John Cage.

RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME 1945-46 silent, b/w, 16′ With Deren, Rita Christiani, Frank Westbrook, Anais Nin.