Maya Deren was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren is a multi-genre artist who is primarily known as a filmmaker but who also worked in dance, poetry, and film theory, paid special attention to the materials involved in film and filmmaking. Her films include multiple images of fabric and textiles, and her writings consistently note the physical components involved in filmmaking, the cameras instrument, the cinematic equipment, and the bodies of the actors.
For my final essay, I chose Meshes of the Afternoon. Aside from being Maya Deren’s most successful film. A mesh of the Afternoon is a short experimental film directed by wife and husband team, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. The film's narrative is circular, and repeats a number of psychologically symbolic images, including a flower on along driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper-like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean.
The reason why this film is so strong is because this is about herself. Maya Deren came up with her ideas from personal experience, feelings and her emotions. "The film image whose intangible reality consists of lights and shadows beamed through the air and caught on the surface of a silver screen comes to us as the reflection of another world"(Deren 2005e). This statement conveys film as not only magical and otherworldly but material: even though it possesses an “intangible reality," it is the product of objects moving in space. She did this through her dream sequences, multiple selves, and the artistic use of time and space.
Deren exploits this "contrast" between...
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...utube.com/watch?v=4S03Aw5HULU http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225773?&Search=yes&searchText=Maya&searchText=Deren&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DMaya%2BDeren%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&prevSearch=&item=5&ttl=1940&returnArticleService=showFullText http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026556?&Search=yes&searchText=Maya&searchText=Deren&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DMaya%2BDeren%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&prevSearch=&item=2&ttl=1940&returnArticleService=showFullText http://www.jstor.org/stable/778529?&Search=yes&searchText=Maya&searchText=Deren&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DMaya%2BDeren%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=1940&returnArticleService=showFullText http://www.entertainmentscene360.com/index.php/meshes-of-the-afternoon-meshes-afternoon-maya-deren-deren-maya-15109/
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
This analysis will explore these cinematic techniques employed by Pontecorvo within a short sequence and examine their effects on our understanding of the issues and themes raised within the film.
Maya Angelou uses powerful imagery to transport the reader into a specific event. One of the most influential pieces of imagery the author used
Maya seems to have been an imaginative child, as she envisions her "head [bursting] like a dropped watermelon" from trying to hold her bladder. Angelou shows a talent for using images to explain and clarify feelings, and employing her descriptive powers to make even mundane incidents very vivid.
"Angelou, Maya (biography)." Her Heritage: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Famous American Women. 1.00 ed. 1995. eLibrary. Web. 19 May. 2014.
The film Wendy and Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt, presents a sparse narrative. The film has been criticised for its lack of background story, and as a short film, much of the story is left to the viewer to infer from what is presented in the plot. However, Wendy and Lucy is able to depict the intimate relationship between Wendy and her dog as well as reflecting more broadly on the everyday, and commenting on the current economic state of the film’s setting in America. This essay will examine how film form contributes to the viewer’s awareness of the story in Wendy and Lucy and allows a deeper understanding of the themes presented. The aspects of mise-en-scene, shot and editing and sound in the film will be explored.
... all audiences can face their personal hardships. No matter the color of your skin or gender, Maya Angelou’s works are timeless testaments to the potential of the human spirit to overcome adversity, and constant reminders that even if the world is against us, we must still rise.
Perhaps an even stronger testament to the deepness of cinema is Darren Aronofsky’s stark, somber Requiem for a Dream. Centering on the drug-induced debasement of four individuals searching for the abstract concept known as happiness, Requiem for a Dream brims with verisimilitude and intensity. The picture’s harrowing depiction of the characters’ precipitous fall into the abyss has, in turn, fascinated and appalled, yet its frank, uncompromising approach leaves an indelible imprint in the minds of young and old alike.
"I had decided that St. Louis was a foreign country. In my mind I had only stayed there for a few weeks. As quickly as I understood that I had not reached my home, I sneaked away to Robin's Hood's Forest and the caves of Alley Oop where all reality was unreal and even that changed my day. I carried the same shield that I had used in Stamps: 'I didn't come to stay.'"
The novel’s young protagonist first loses her sense of self during early childhood as a result of her constant self-comparison to White people. In this autobiography, Angelou refers to herself by her full name, Marguerite Ann Johnson. Maya (in the novel Marguerite Johnson) first shows her discontent of her skin when she puts on her silk Easter dress hoping to resemble a movie star and “look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right in the world” (Angelou 2). To her, the vision of this magnificent movie star would only
Williams, Bruce. "The Reflection of a Blind Gaze: Maria Luisa Bemberg, Filmmaker." A Woman's Gaze: Latin American Women Artists. Ed. Marjorie Agosin. New York; White Pine Press, 1998. 171-90.
...the predominant theme of disorientation and lack of understanding throughout the film. The audience is never clear of if the scene happening is authentic or if there is a false reality.
"Maya Angelou Criticism." ENotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. .
John Pruitt, ‘Stan Brakhage and the Long Reach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film.’ in Steinhoff, Eirik (ed) Chicago Review: Stan Brakhage : Correspondences 47:4/ 48: 1, p 166-132z
Maya Angelou is an award winning American author and poet. Her writing was first published in the 1960’s, a time a racial tension and cry for civil rights. Also, at this time many women did not work outside of the home. However, Angelou’s work revealed the lives of black women who often were sole breadwinners in their households. Much of Maya Angelou’s work was that of autobiography. Many of her poems and books were influenced by her life and addressed the issues of racism, incest, family and identity that many Americans could relate to .