A Visit to the MoMa

Where: 11 West 53 Street

2. Henri-Cartier Bresson: The Modern Century



3. 9 Screens

4. Maya Deren's Legacy: Women and Experimental Film

"A woman has the strength to wait, because she's had to wait. She has to wait nine months for the concept of a child. Time is built into her body in the sense of becomingness...Now in any time form, this is a very important sense. I think that my films - putting as much stress as they do upon the constant metamorphosis - one image is always becoming another. That is, it is what is happening that is important in my films, not what is at any moment. This is a woman's time sense. And I think that it happens more in my films than in almost anyone else's." (MoMa 2010)

Biography:
Maya Deren (born Ukraine, 1917-1961) was a pioneer of experimental cinema and the first prominent American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist. Her debut work, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), made with Alexander Hammid, is one of the most well-known American experimental films, and her work overall - including film, performance, and poetry, laid the groundwork for future generations of experimental filmmakers. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Deren wrote about film, screened her work, and lectured at universities, colleges, museums, and film societies across North America, helping to span the growth of independent cinema. (MoMa 2010)

Work:

a) Meditation on Violence
1948, 16mm black and white, sound and music
-flute and drums heard
-Chinese martial arts master
-perform traditional movements of Wu-Tang and Shaolin schools
-bare room
-camera revolves around the subject
-continued strength
-continual flowing movement reflects the Chinese martial arts concept that constant motion contains all possible forms of movement
-halfway through the film, the sequence reverses, creating a seamless loop that ends as it began

b) Ritual in Transfigured Time
1946, 16mm silent black and white

c) Meshes of the Afternoon
1943, silent black and white

d) At Land
1944, 16mm silent black and white

e) Talley Beatly
1945 - A study in choreography for the camera
-explores the relationship between movement and the camera
-dancer travels fluidly through time
-moves seamlessly between a forest, domestic space
-the camera acts as the dancer's hidden partner
-the shooting and editing technique is used to describe metaphysical concepts and to create the illusion of continuous motion.
-It depicts movements that could never be realized on stage

(MoMa 2010)


Modern Female Artists Influenced by Deren:
-Barbara Hammer
"I was struck by Maya Deren's use of time when in Meshes of the Afternoon she placed one foot in the sand, the next one in vegetation, the next on a cement sidewalk, and in the last on the floor of her apartment (one assumes). She crossed time and collapsed it in those few shots."

-Hammer considered Deren a role model and was inspired by her ability to "show personal feelings in an individual way." Hammer makes experimental films including themes such as lesbian sexuality and identity. Interestingly, she never has women on screen. Rather, she prefers to express physicality and emotion through her presence behind the camera. (MoMa 2010)

-Su Friedrich
"Although Deren gives clues to the viewer she still leaves certain things open or mysterious or sort of challenging...we have to connect the dots in order to get everything that's there...I leave a certain amount of work up to the viewer on the assumption that that makes the film more engaging, makes the experience more of a participatory sport than a passive one."
-Carolee Schreeman
"Maya occupied the creative prefeminist thresholds where I could anticipate the complexities, resistances to my own creative will, her visual focus on the body and nature was part of an aesthetic we shared."