Meshes of the Afternoon
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"A landmark short film from the godmother of the American avant-garde, Maya Deren. No other film describes the illogical mystery of dreams quite like this one—its miraculous images are potent enough to find a way into your own dreamscape."
— MUBI's take
Meshes of the Afternoon
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1990.
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Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 American short experimental film directed by and starring wife-and-husband team Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid.
Why It Rocks
- The film's been acknowledged as one of the classics of avant-garde cinema. Its impact on filmmakers was enormous, on one level because she showed how an independent, experimental cinema could exist in a commercial marketplace
- Top-notched editing from Maya Deren: With a budget of a couple hundred dollars, she manipulated images to create a dreamlike world that exists in a different space and time. There isn’t a linear visual flow; lots of repeating images and jump cuts create both confusion and familiarity, which is exactly how most dreams feel. The result is a film that challenges conventions and explores film’s artistic limits.
- This short was very different from other movies at the time. While dream sequences had been used in many features and shorts, and visual symbols were wide-spread in cinema -- especially in animation -- Meshes has a distinctive visual look and editing scheme which at the time were tremendously exciting. Previous experimental films had been shot with professional equipment and 35mm film stock, largely on sets. In this case, the Los Angeles sunlight gives a sharp definition to the exterior walkways and foliage, while the 16mm camera moves in gyrating patterns and quick bursts that wouldn't have been possible in mainstream movies.
- On the surface the record of a dream, or "trance", the film is a catalog of symbols, both obvious and obscure. After decades of pop-culture psychiatry, the shots of flowers, purses, keys, doorways and steps are fairly easy to decipher, along with the slow motion and jump-cut scenes that repeat or distort activity. Other films would resist quick interpretation.
- Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid both do incredible direction and silent performances.
- Additionally, Deren's presence was even more startling than the camera work, as she had a lush, full body and defiantly unruly hair, making her the opposite of the typical airbrushed and de-ethnicized Hollywood actress. Wearing pants and a plain top, Deren moved with a dancer's grace that belied the spartan, often threadbare locations around for her.
- The film presents rich commentaries on the duplicity of persona, self-reflexivity and the constraints of femininity as a nameless woman (played by Deren) travels through various subjective interludes.
- It's tempting to read the film as a psycho-dramatization of Deren's resistance to conventional marriage and domesticity.
Trivia
- Meshes of the Afternoon is the first popular avant-garde film.
- Meshes of the Afternoon and The Great Train Robbery are the first short films to be inducted into the National Film Registry.
- Meshes of the Afternoon and Harlan County, U.S.A. are the first female-directed films (Maya Deren for Meshes and Barbara Kopple for Harlan) to be inducted into the National Film Registry.
- Meshes of the Afternoon is the first experimental short film to be inducted into the National Film Registry.
- Meshes of the Afternoon, Killer of Sheep and A Woman Under the Influence are the first independently produced films to be inducted into the National Film Registry.