Comfort Film Presents: The Films of Maya Deren
The Chicago Film Society will present and project an outdoor screening of films of Maya Deren.
Born in Kyiv to a prosperous Jewish family in the same year as the Russian Revolution, Maya Deren would study dance, Symbolist poetry, and voudou, fusing these disparate interests into a new template of personal filmmaking. After buying a used 16mm Bolex camera with inheritance proceeds, Deren and her husband Alexander Hammid created Meshes of the Afternoon, a spooky, small-gauge reverie that teased and tarnished the contours of Hollywood’s ‘women’s pictures,’ in their Laurel Canyon bungalow for $250. Now established as a canonical clarion of avant-garde film, Meshes was scarcely seen when new because there was no distribution or exhibition network for such a film—a literal “home movie” of infinite interior depths. Deren, who spent her college years as a Socialist agitator and activist, quickly began organizing: renting out theaters, posting flyers, promoting the hell out of herself and her new art form, and lecturing at any college or gallery that would allow her to set up a projector. Although Deren’s entire cinematic output could be viewed (twice!) in the time it takes to watch a modern comic book movie or an Alejandro González Iñárritu ego trip, her legacy as a boundless artist, bohemian entrepreneur, and instinctive scene-maker remains unsurpassed. Nowadays Deren’s films are most often encountered in the staid confines of a film studies class, but we’re showing these witchy landmarks where they belong: under the stars in 16mm, the very eye of night. (KW)
The program includes: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, 14 min), At Land 1944, 15 min), A Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945, 3 min), Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946, 15 min), The Private Life of a Cat (1946, 22 min, preserved by Anthology Film Archives), The Very Eye of Night (1959, 15 min)
Media: 16mm
Screening will be outdoors.
Programmed for Comfort Station by Raul Benitez, Emily Perez and Mathew Tapey.