Book123

    Free register and download UseNet downloader, then you can FREE Download from UseNet.

    Download without Limit " Audiobooks & Video Training Maya Deren Experimental Films (1943-1959) [1 DVD5] (2002) " from UseNet for FREE!

More

Maya Deren Experimental Films (1943-1959) [1 DVD5] (2002)

Avant Garde | Black and White | Dolby Digital Mono | Silent with music | 76 mins

The collected short films of Maya Deren, director of one of the most poetic and beguiling cinematic puzzles, Meshes of the Afternoon.

Buy Book at Lowest Price on Amazon

This info from

Meshes of the Afternoon 1943-59, 14 min.

This definitely is the one to see. The bare outlines of a little story have a young woman (Deren) led up a hillside walkway, where she enters an attractive house; she interacts with a man and then seems to float around the room, an effect handled almost exclusively with a subjective camera. She eventually (we think) witnesses the arrival of a doppelgänger, who also enters the house. This copy undergoes the same experiences until we have three Mayas together in the room. First husband Alexander Hammid helped Deren film this slice of perfection; it was re-scored in 1959 by her second husband Teiji Ito, which explains the second date above. Deren must have been quite the artistic personality. She changed her name from Eleanora Derenkowsky for this picture, and chose "Maya" because Hammid said that it meant "illusion." As an actress she has a natural look, velvety smooth motions and a questing expression on her face that encourages our involvement.

At Land 1944, 15 min.

At Land is another slice of a dream world. A female spirit washes up on a beach and climbs some rocks that lead into a corporate boardroom, where she swims down a table between the lines of businessmen. Other surreal occurrences are just as spooky. Anaïs Nin reportedly first saw Deren when she came upon her lying in the surf of a Long Island beach while Hammid filmed. The beach material surely made 1,001 aspiring film students think that they could rush to the shoreline and return with a similar masterpiece. It's not that easy.

A Study in Choreography for the Camera 1945 silent, 4 min.

Deren switches from Surrealism to the Dance Film subgenre, conducting a brief study of a dancer's moves without cinematic interpretation.

Ritual in Transfigured Time 1945-46, 15 min.

The dance influence encroaches on Deren's surrealistic dreams in her most elaborate picture. Anaïs Nin and dancer Rita Christiani (I Walked with a Zombie) join Deren at a fancy dress ball and then cavort with an idealized male dancer (Frank Westbrook) in the gardens outdoors. Deren's facility with direction has advanced but the picture lacks the more intimate touch seen in the earlier pieces.

Meditation on Violence 1948, 12 min.

Dance aficionados and Hapkido experts may respond to this picture, a take-it-or-leave-it concept effort. Deren films Hatian-Chinese martial artist Chao Li Chi in an unchanging medium shot as he goes through strenuous action forms involving a lot of punching. Sometimes he wears a shirt and sometimes not. Li Chi's stated philosophy proposes that constant motion is a way of possessing natural forces, instead of being possessed by them. But it's difficult to see how his impressive display becomes a meditation on violence. 1

The Very Eye of Night 1952-59, 15 min.

Maya Deren's last film is again dance-related and did not impress this viewer. We only see glimpses of dancing as the film is arranged mostly to show floating figures moving or posing superimposed over a starry sky, like statuary imitating constellations. The effects to do this are smoothly executed but the film never looks like much more than a filmmaker overreaching -- 16mm opticals just don't cut it.

DVD

DVD release 2002

Label: Mystic Fire

System: NTSC

Colour: Black and White

Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

Language: Silent with music

Runtime: 76 minutes total

Extras

Excerpt from Divine Horseman: The Living Gods Of Haiti

The Private Life Of A Cat - previously unreleased short by Alexander Hammid

Picture Gallery

Notes ad quotes

Biography

Extraction

Engine: DVD Decrypter

DVD: 1 Single-layer DVD

File Extension: .ISO (Image)

File Size: 4 (200 MB RARs)

Scans: (400 dpi) 5MB

Total file size: 4.0 GBs

Pass is my username

Links are interchangeable

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123