Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961) was an experimental filmmaker and important promoter of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer. Was she bisexual? It seems that the jury is out; but Maria Prammagiore suggests one can read her films through a bisexual lens. What do you think?
Maya Deren – Meshes of the Afternoon from Re:Voir Video on Vimeo.
“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
Meshes of the Afternoon –
Maya Deren
1943, 15 min, 16mm, b&w, mono
