The fantastic in Maya Deren
The other alternative to the classic cinema crisis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/Eviternare.vi13.16416Keywords:
avant-garde, horror, occultism, surrealism, terrorAbstract
American Horror Classical Cinema from the 30s had two alternatives in the 40s, being one of them also inside the established classical parameters that found a new way in Val Lewton’s proposal at the RKO. The other alternative was born in Avant-Garde cinema thanks to Maya Deren’s work. She was a filmmaker, ethnographer, dancer, poet and photographer whose achievements and legacy have inspired several artists and filmmakers in the last seventy years. This text explores Maya Deren’s American independent cinema, analysing her short films Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), At Land (1944) and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), in order to expose how Surrealism (Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau films mainly) and Occultism (her experience as William Seabrook assistant and her interest in Magic, Cabala and Voudou) helped her to open a new way in Horror and Fantastic Cinema. Deren’s sensitivity to women problems and her love to dance made her film three movies where she shows three different phases of female initiation journey to a higher plane. It must be said that Meshes of the Afternoon was made in close collaboration with her then husband the czech photographer and moviemaker Alexander Hammid.
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