Showing posts with label Maya Deren. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maya Deren. Show all posts

Friday, 2 April 2010

Anais Nin

Ritual in Transfigured Time

A muse of Maya Deren, Anais Nin featured in the film 'Ritual in Transfigured Time' 1946.

A silent, textural, and hypnotic composition in movement and expression, revealing the film's tone through the choreography of bodies in performance of ritual, and in the process, creates a haunting dimensionality of time and the potentiality of fate, the dynamics of human relationships passing fleeting transient mirrored in ritualistic dance, I like to think Nin`s role is one of a mediator initiating a young woman into the intrinsic power play relationship between the sexes. As a writer distinctively known for her journals detailing intimate personal journeys throughout numerous
relationships dealing with areas of erotica and flirting with feminist theory.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing."

"Dreams are necessary to life."

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

“I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.”


Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren

YouTube - Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren First Part

Although Deren never used the term surrealistic to define her work, she actively rejected categorization as a surrealist, or structuralist film maker, many have drawn the obvious comparisons whether valid or not.
Her work with Duchamp shall forever mold her affiliation with the surrealist movement, and for me will always inspire thoughts of Escher`s skewed perspectives and use of shadow, amongst numerous others.

Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren

YouTube - Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren Second Part

David Lynch Lost Highway

YouTube - David Lynch-Lost Highway Mystery Man at party

Maya Deren as a key figure in early Avant-Garde film making, experiments with narrative and elements of surrealism in Meshes of the Afternoon. Her influence is apparent in David Lynch`s Lost Highway as he experiments with narrative from a similar position, the doubling of characters and the air of paranoia as it descendes into a nightmarish state.

Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Meshes of the Afternoon







Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 Maya Deren

Ethereal and Haunting a beautiful piece of cinema, made all the more so because of the musical score by Teiji Ito.


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