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Poster for Maya Deren Shorts

Maya Deren Shorts

Director: Maya Deren Run Time: 73 min. Format: DCP

Join us for several short films by revolutionary filmmaker Maya Deren, set to a hypnotic and beautiful live score by musician Annie Hart.

Maya Deren is most famous for her groundbreaking experimental work, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), which won the Grand Prix International for avant-garde film at Cannes. This and other works presented in this program are famous not only for their break with traditional timelines, editing and narrative techniques, but also their depiction of women as the subject of a film, rather than object. Deren used a low budget to stay outside of the borders of Hollywood’s mainstream, allowing her complete artistic freedom in breaking conventional filmmaking boundaries. “By achieving worldwide recognition for films that she made on her own, with family and friends, on trivial budgets, [Deren] spurred generations of experimental filmmakers to follow in her footsteps” (The New Yorker).

Hart and friends will combine vintage synthesizer loops, mallet percussion, and chamber music instruments to create ephemeral and unique scores for each of these six films.

The shorts

Ritual in Transfigured Time
Meshes of The Afternoon
Meditation on Violence
At Land
The Very Eye of Night
Study in Choreography