Arclite 2: Maya Deren

ARCLITE 2: MAYA DEREN
London The Exhibit
15 & 18 March 2007

Following the huge success of Arclite 1 in December, Louis Benassi and Ben Northover return to showcase the experimental cinema of MAYA DEREN and films by STORM DE HIRSCH.
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Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

Thursday 15 March 2007, at 7:30pm
THE EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA OF MAYA DEREN 1917-1961

"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 cinematic fact, captured by Maya Deren at that point where the lens cooperates as a prodigious discoverer." (Le Corbusier, 1945)

A video presentation by Jonas Mekas has been produced especially for this screening, and a limited amount of "The Legend Of Maya Deren" (Volume 1, Parts 1 & 2), and other books published by Anthology Film Archives / Film Culture will be on sale.

MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON
Maya Deren, USA, 1943, 16mm, b/w, sound, 15 mins
This film is concerned with the inner realties of an individual and with the way in which the sub-conscious will develop, interpit and elaborate an apparently simple and casual occurrence into a critical and emotional experience. It is culminated by a double ending in which it would seem that the imagined achieved, for the protagonist, such force that it became reality. Using cinematic techniques to achieve dislocations of inanimate objects, unexpected simultaneities, etc, this film establishes a reality, which, although somewhat based on dramatic logic, can only exist only on film.

RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME
Maya Deren, USA, 1945-46, 16mm, b/w, sound, 16 mins
Ritual In Transfigured Time silently follows Rita Christiani's perspective as she enters an apartment to find Maya Deren immersed in the ritual of unwinding wool from a loom. Deren includes another expression of the external invading the internal with a strange wind that surrounds and entrances her as she becomes transported by the ritual. Ritual in Transfigured Time links the looming ritual with the ritual of the social greeting. Christiani enters a party, meets and greets, moving throughout the crowd like a dancer. Her movements become increasingly expressive and fluid, the ritual becomes a performance. Key themes in this film are the dread of rejection and the contrasting freedom of expression in the abandonment to the ritual

MEDITATIONS ON VIOLENCE
Maya Deren, USA, 1948, 16mm, b/w, sound, 10 mins
In Meditation on Violence, Deren's camera is motivated by the movement of the performer, Chao Li Chi. This film is marked by a lack of dynamism and mobility that we have come to expect from Deren's camera. It also obscures the distinction between violence and beauty. The shadows on the white wall behind Chi amplify the movement of the Wu Tang ritual. In Meditation on Violence Deren experiments with film time, reversing the film part way through producing a loop. Exhibited forwards and then backwards, the difference in the Wu Tang movements is almost imperceptible.

A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA
Maya Deren, USA, 1945, 16mm, b/2, silent, 3 mins
With A Study in Choreography for the Camera, Deren's 16mm Bolex becomes a performer equal in significance to the star of this film, Talley Beattey. In the opening sequence Deren's camera rotates more than 360 degrees, scanning past the figure in movement. In this film Deren articulates the potential for transcendence through dance and ritual. The movement of the dancer does not always motivate the camera, so Deren's visual expression remains free floating. The spaces linked in this film range from the interior of a museum to the forest and courtyard. Deren writes, "The movement of the dancer creates a geography that never was. With a turn of the foot, he makes neighbours of distant places." As Beattey spins, he appears to develop more than one face, forming an illusion of a totem pole.

AT LAND
Maya Deren, USA, 1944, 16mm, b/w, silent, 16 mins
Deren's second experimental film, At Land, reinforces her interest in the juxtaposition of anachronistic spaces and introduces a critique of social rituals. This film begins by reversing the natural rhythm with images of waves breaking and descending back into the sea. Starring again, Deren is seen climbing up a dead tree trunk on the beach, magically emerging onto a table where a formal dinner party is in progress. This 'civilized' world ignores Deren as she crawls along their dinner table. By depicting herself as invisible to the diners, Deren highlights the myopia of the guests. The dinner sequence in At Land ends with an enchanted chess game. A pawn falls from the table and descends back into the dead wood on the beach; it falls over rocks, into the water and is washed away over the waterfalls. Chasing the pawn, Deren is restored to her original landscape.

+ Films by Storm De Hirsch
+ New Arc-Lites (new and rarely seen short works by internationally established and up and coming contemporary artist filmmakers.)

Divine Horsemen (Maya Deren, 1947-54)

Sunday 18 March 2007, at 4.30pm
DIVINE HORSEMEN - THE LIVING GODS OF HAITI

DIVINE HORSEMEN - THE LIVING GODS OF HAITI
Maya Deren, USA, 1947-54, 16mm, b/w, sound, 50 mins
"'When the anthropologist arrives, the gods depart' So declares, a Haitian proverb. Maya Deren, on the other hand, was an artist: therein the secret of her ability to recognise 'facts of the mind' when presented through the 'fictions' of a mythology. Her avant-garde films, composed before her first trip to Haiti, had already testified to her understanding of the pictorial script of dream, vision, and hallucination. She went first to Haiti as an artist, thinking to make a film in which Haitian dance should be a leading theme. But the manifestations of rapture that there first fascinated and then seized her transported her beyond the bounds of any art she had ever known. She was open, willingly and respectfully, to the message of the speechless deep, which is, indeed, the wellspring of the mysteries. And so it was that when I first met her, just following her plunge into what she has named 'the White Darkness' she was in a state of high exaltation" (Joseph Campbell)


at

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12 Balham Station Road, Balham, London, SW12 9SG
Nearest Tube: Balham (Northern Line)
Nearest Train: Balham BR (from Victoria or Waterloo)
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Tickets: £6 (Thursday 15 March) / £4 (Sunday 18 March)
Box Office: 020 8772 6556
Email: sarah@exhibitbars.com
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