Maya Deren - Experimental Films

All of the rejected material from MAYA DEREN’s simplest and purest film offers the student of cinema and those interested in MAYA DEREN a vivid lesson in how she constructed a film. When shown together with a completed film it provides a model for economy in editing.

A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.

CINEMA16 celebrates the short film by showcasing some of the best classic and award-winning shorts on DVD. With over three hours of films CINEMA16: AMERICAN SHORT FILMS is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in the moving image. Films include Gus Van Sant's 1982 adaptation of a William S. Burroughs short story, The Discipline Of DE, Tim Burton's early stop motion animated classic Vincent, George Lucas' USC short Freiheit, Alexander Payne's previously unreleased UCLA graduation short Carmen, Paperboys by Mike Mills, D.A. Pennebaker's Duke Ellington scored Daybreak Express, Todd Solondz's NYU short Feelings, along with Oscar Winner The Lunch Date by Adam Davidson, Stefan Nadelman's multi- award winning documentary Terminal Bar, Joe Nussbaum's cult classic George Lucas In Love and 2006 Sundance Winner The Wraith Of Cobble Hill by Adam Parrish King. Films are subtitled in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese, and include commentaries from many of the directors involved.

A woman washes up on a beach and embarks on a surreal journey, encountering others and fragmented versions of herself in a quest for identity.

An intimate study of the life of a domestic cat, taking place over a period of months as she gives birth to a litter of kittens and cares for them as they grow.

A social event choreographed in the manner of a dance, illuminated by concepts drawn from Greek legend; one of filmmaker Maya Deren's most intriguing works.

The surrealist film shows repetitive imagery involving a string fashioned in a bizarre, almost spiderweb-like pattern over the hands of several individuals, most notably an unnamed young woman and an elderly gentleman. The film also shows a shadowy darkness and people filmed at odd angles, an exposed human heart, and other occult symbols and ritualistic imagery which evokes an unsettling and dream-like aura. Considered an unfinished film.

This intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the footage, so this “finished” version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren’s death.

Dancers, shown in photographic negative, perform a series of ballet moves, solos, pas de deux, larger groupings. The dancers glide and rotate untroubled by gravity against a slowly changing starfield background. Their movements are accompanied by music scored for a small ensemble of woodwind and percussion.

Ensemble for Somnambulists is an unfinished experimental silent film Maya Deren made while teaching a workshop at the Toronto Film Society.

Maya Deren’s shortest, two-minute A Study in Choreography for Camera seems like an exercise piece to capture a dancer’s movement on celluloid, which later on developed into her masterpieces such as Ritual in Transfigured Time and Meditation on Violence.

Chao-Li Chi shadow boxes indoors and practices with a sword outdoors. Theoretically, the film describes in a single continuous movement three degrees of traditional Chinese boxing, Wu-tang, Shao-lin, and Shao-lin with a sword. A long sequence of the ballet-like, sinuous Wu-tang becomes the more erratic Shao-lin; in the middle, there is an abrupt change to leaping sword movements, in the center of which, at the apogee of the leap, there is a long held freeze-frame.

Deborah Stratman brings past perspectives into the contemporary moment in a montage of unfinished film footage from artist Barbara Hammer with evocative sound, texts, and teachings from artist Maya Deren. Vever poetically draws connects between three generations of women filmmakers who separately, and now together, have taken on unknown challenges, and opened themselves up to reinterpretation in their filmmaking practices.

Unfinished, 16mm, b&w silent film directed by Maya Deren.

5 short films, from 5 directors and 4 different countries on the theme of the Alter-Ego. The "Alter Ego Film Project" is inspired by the spirit of Maya Deren and her way of making films. Between double personality, secret identity, doppelgänger and impossible love we have discovered several unconventional stories halfway between narrative and experimental.

Unfinished, 16mm, b&w silent film directed by Maya Deren. No copy of this film exists