BackMeshes of the Afternoon
(book in English)
- Type
- Studies
- Subject
- One Film > Meshes of the Afternoon
- Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid, avant-garde
- Publishing Date
- 2011
> See the newer edition (2020) - Publisher
- BFI Publishing
- Collection
- BFI Film Classics
- Language
- English
Relative size
- Physical desc.
- Paperback • 128 pages • 24 €
5 ¼ x 8 inches (13.5 x 20 cm) - ISBN
- 978-1-8445-7377-6
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Book Presentation:
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is the most important film in the history of American avant-garde cinema and one of the most significant and influential films in the whole of film history. It was made by Maya Deren and her then husband Alexander Hammid in their bungalow above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles for a mere $274.90. The artistic collaboration between Deren and Hammid which was by all accounts harmonious finds its distorted and unhappy reflection in the vision of the tormented female protagonist in Meshes of the Afternoon. The film's focus through a series of intricate and interlocking dream sequences on female experience and the domestic sphere link it to the Hollywood melodramas of the period, while its unsettling atmosphere of dread, death and doubles makes it a counter-cinematic cousin to film noir. The film has made its influence felt not only on the entire subsequent history of experimental film and video production, but also on the work of Hollywood auteurs. It is a touchstone of women's film-making, of modernist cinema and of modern art. John David Rhodes traces the film's history back into the lives of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, but in particular that of Deren. He places special significance on the film as a culmination of Deren's abiding interest in modernism and her intense engagement in socialist politics. Rhodes argues that while the film remains a powerful point of reference for the feminist film-makers and experimentalists who have claimed it as their birthright, it also offers itself as an example of political art in the broadest terms. In Rhodes's original study, Meshes of the Afternoon emerges as a film that is not only artistically ingenious, but also rich in historical significance and political potential.
See the publisher website: BFI Publishing
Newer edition
Meshes of the Afternoon (2020)
Publisher: BFI Publishing
(in English)
Subject: One Film > Meshes of the Afternoon
See Meshes of the Afternoon on IMDB ...
> On a related topic:
Meshes of the Afternoon (2020)
by John David Rhodes
(in English)
Subject: One Film > Meshes of the Afternoon
Dialogues théoriques avec Maya Deren (2000)
Du cinéma expérimental au film ethnographique
Subject: Director > Maya Deren
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Subject: One Film > Man with a Movie Camera
Artaud-Dulac, la coquille et le clergyman (2009)
Essai d'élucidation d'une querelle mythique
by Odette Virmaux and Alain Virmaux
(in French and English)
Subject: One Film > The Seashell and the Clergyman
L'homme à la caméra de Dziga Vertov (1990)
Subject: One Film > Man with a Movie Camera
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