Maya Deren Experimental Films

"The collected shorts of Maya Deren the ""Mother of the trance film"" who worked completely outside the commercial film industry and made her own inner experience the center of her films.

"From the early 1940's until her death in 1961, Maya Deren evoked and exemplified the American avant-garde movement virtually by herself. Her first film, MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, set the tone for the decade and linked the movement to the older European avant-garde films of Cocteau and Buñuel." - Cecile Starr, The New York Times

""The cinema of Maya Deren delivers us from the studios: it presents our eyes with physical facts which contain profound psychological meaning; it beats out within our hearts a time which alternates, continues, revolves, pounds, or flies away... Poetry, after all, is the feast which life offers those who know how to receive with their eyes and hearts, and understand."" - Le Corbusier

""Intensely personal, symbolic and surreal films that reveal her deepest, darkest fantasies. She's Fellini and Bergman wrapped in one gloriously possessed body. Watching these films can change forever your concept of what cinema can be."" - L. A. Weekly Further Information:

Includes: MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943-59, in collaboration with Alexander Hammid, music by Teiji Ito, 14 min.) AT LAND (1944, silent, 15 min.) A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR CAMERA (1945, silent, 4 min.) RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1945-6, silent, 15 min.) MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE (1948, music arranged by Maya Deren, 12 min.) THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT (1952-59, choreographic collaboration by Anthony Tudor, music by Teiji Ito, 15 min.)

Special Features: Excerpt from DIVINE HORSEMAN: THE LIVING GODS OF HAITI PRIVATE LIFE OF A CAT Previously unreleased short by Alexander Hammid PICTURE GALLERY NOTES AND QUOTES BIOGRAPHY"