Maya Deren At Land Pt.1

Deren's second experimental film, At Land (1944), reinforces her interest in the juxtaposition of anachronistic spaces and introduces a critique of social rituals. This film begins by reversing the natural rhythm with images of waves breaking and descending back into the sea. Starring again, Deren is seen climbing up a dead tree trunk on the beach, magically emerging onto a table where a formal dinner party is in progress. This 'civilized' world ignores Deren as she crawls along their dinner table. By depicting herself as invisible to the diners, Deren highlights the myopia of the guests. The dinner sequence in At Land ends with an enchanted chess game. A pawn falls from the table and descends back into the dead wood on the beach, it falls over rocks, into the water and is washed away over the waterfalls. Chasing the pawn, Deren is restored to her original landscape. - Wendy Haslem

• Category

  Film & Animation

[Diego Costa]

I love it how cats flushing the toilets get 5,00000 views on YouTube, but Maya Deren's masterpieces get 578 views!

[splattproductions]

That's true ... we have the attention span of a tennis ball, now.

[Suely Parente Souza]

wonderful...



[Nikki Taylor]

I loved this film. When I first watched it I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Its well-crafted film and the editing techniques greatly have helped me as a young filmmaker :)

[Brandon Paris]

is there supposed to be no sound?

[screenjunky]

opening scene of Inception!

[Aceticacidplease]

I can respect the film editing techniques she pioneered. Absolutely no problem with any of that. I guess I could credit my film class and the readings I was given with trying to force some sort of "story" into it if there isn't one. I don't like forced interpretations because they are subjective and it makes things like this seem... perhaps more pretentious than they were meant to be.

[aairtrafficc]

the key to viewing avant garde films is to not focus on what it "means" or to try to make sense of it - because you will get incredibly frustrated by doing so. You just have to take it all in with a completely open mind without the intention of drawing some sort of conclusion. Also - Maya Deren was completely ahead of her time in regards to film editing - watch it again and pick up on her great editing techniques - it's really amazing!

[cmatthews926]

wow, just watched this with Colin Stetson's "Clothed in the skin of the dead" playing. Pure coincidence, but it worked magically. Gotta love beautiful mistakes.

[taliayu]

Lasiren Labalen, chapeau m tombe dan la mer