Meshes of the Afternoon
- Maya Deren
- Alexander Hammid
Meshes of the Afternoon is (English for loops of the afternoon ), an experimental short film by the filmmakers Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid from the year 1943.
Action
The black and white film is without words and has a very tight action, their interpretation remains largely left to the viewer. It shows in surreal and hallucinatory images the nightmare of an unnamed woman who eventually takes her own life. One of the central motifs and symbols of the film include a flower, a key, a bread knife, a telephone, curtains blowing, the sea and a mysterious, black -clad figure.
Background
The couple and Hammid Their intention with Meshes of the Afternoon the presentation of mental health problems (depression, schizophrenia ) as an avant-garde experimental film. As a role model to them were the works of the surrealist film, especially Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel.
Maya Deren, who removed her real name Eleanora Derenkovskaya for this project, reached while writing the script back to personal memories and dreams. Meshes of the Afternoon was shot with the 16 mm Bolex camera of her father, a psychiatrist, who had great influence on their work. As a " studio" was the house of the couple in the Kings Road in Los Angeles.
Besides Their Hammid and no other persons were involved in the making of the film. Is controversial to this day how great Deren's share of production really was. The director Stan Brakhage, who knew the couple personally, wrote in his 1991 book film at Wit 's End that Meshes of the Afternoon was mainly Hammids work. Following the publication However, their most recognition was given. Supposedly have suffered greatly from their marriage. She was divorced in 1947.
Style and effect
The work makes use of a variety of cinematic style agents to clarify his dreamlike effect and the unreal mood of the plot. So the main character is beginning to see only shadows. A hand appears to come from the sky and disappears into nothingness. The camera shake and fast cutting convey a feeling of dizziness and disorientation.
Also noteworthy is the use of slow motion ( the woman running up the stairs ), stop-motion (a key turns into a knife ) and a split-screen technique that allows the main character, is sitting opposite yourself. Moreover, the film has a cyclic structure. Many scenes and actions are repeated several times and produce in the viewer a sense of déjà vu.
The film was originally completely silent. In 1959 he was set to music by the Japanese composer Teiji Ito and Deren's third husband.
Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the first American avant-garde films. He had great influence on the development of experimental film (New American Cinema ). Among the directors who were inspired by the movie and cited it in their own works, including Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Jean -Luc Godard and David Lynch. One of the most famous images of the work, the Maya Deren appeared at a window, was a much-copied icon of independent cinema. In the 1970s, the critic James Hoberman Meshes of the Afternoon, referred to as a commentary on the film noir.
Criticism
" Maya Deren's film is an enigmatic masterpiece through and through. The innovatively designed images, dark and irritating, and the fantastic assembly, pushing against the entire bounds of logic and understanding, combine to create a brilliant working film meditative and highly lyrical acts. " meshes of the Afternoon" is certainly one of the most beautiful, the most challenging pieces of film of all time, a surreal, verstandbeugendes poem. " Björn load on Filmzentrale.com