At Land/A Study in Choreography for Camera/Ritual in Transfigured Time/Meditation on Violence (1944-1948)

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At Land/A Study in Choreography for Camera/Ritual in Transfigured Time/Meditation on Violence (1944-1948) – M. Deren

After completing Meshes of the Afternoon in collaboration with Alexander Hamid, Maya Deren went on to make four more short films that helped to flesh out and clarify her ideas.  In At Land, she sets off from Meshes’s juxtaposition of four steps each on a different terrain to show herself climbing up a tree into a dinner party and onward to other locales; P. Adams Sitney (whose book I am reading) notes how she edits time as well as space, moving more swiftly than possible from one sand dune to the next in the closing minutes. A Study in Choreography briefly shows a dancer transposed (across three minutes) into different locations as the dance continues, cutting on movement to keep a smooth flow. Meditation on Violence similarly shows a Chinese martial artist demonstrating Shaolin and Wu Tang styles (as well as some swordplay) first forwards on different sets and then in reverse (although unless you looked closely perhaps this might not be so noticeable).  Sitney spends most of the remainder of the chapter discussing Ritual in Transfigured Time which does seem the most complex of the films. Here Deren plays a smaller role while another woman first rolls up yarn that Deren gives her and then is beckoned to a party.  The party itself involves numerous repeated sequences of people embracing or reaching out to greet each other which is a masterful demonstration of editing (and prolonging of time). Then, we are treated to sensuous dancing which takes a Greek turn when the male dancer, naked from the waist up, is then seen on a pedestal, soon leaping off in slow and interrupted motion.  Unlike in her first film, these later films do not contain much of a narrative that allows any psychodramatic interpretation to be laid upon them – everything is form rather than content (as far as I can tell). Deren then left for Haiti where she had intended (with the help of a grant from Guggenheim) to continue an examination of local rituals (Voudoun) in comparison to children’s games – but her experiences there changed her views and she made few subsequent films, dying young.  Nevertheless, her contribution to avant-garde film, focused on shifting time and space perspectives as well as movement and choreography are thought-provoking and deep.