by Aric HarrisonIn 1943 Maya Deren, a Russian born dancer/choreographer bought a second hand camera and with it she became the mother of Avant-Garde filmmaking. With the help of her cinematographer husband, Alexander Hammid, she gave life to one of the most inspired avant-garde films of all time, and one of the first feminists themed films, Meshes of the Afternoon. In this sixteen-minute nightmare we become part of Deren’s dark and oppressive reality. We watch as time gradually breaks her apart, fragmenting her into multiple dreamlike existences. She is forced to confront herself, her subconscious, and the patriarchal system that she exists in. What we discover is that her personal freedom derives from the separation of herself in life, through death, from the man who has taken her individual liberty away. He has brought her into a home that feels distant to her. She cannot cope. Deren’s contempt for the restrictiveness of her relationship quickly leads her away from sanity. She must reflect herself in order to understand herself.
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by Aric HarrisonWhen Luis Buñel passed away in July of 1983 the New York Times described him as "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary leader of avant-garde surrealism.” Throughout his career Buñel had meticulously crafted a style of experimental filmmaking that was as intellectual as it was visceral. Two filmmakers that praised Buñel for his auteur style were John Huston, who believed that, “regardless of genre, a Buñuel film is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable” and Ingmar Bergman who said that, "Buñuel nearly always made Buñuelian films." One of the most Buñuelian sequences in all of his bizarre oeuvre is the ending of Simón of the Desert.
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ContributorsThe contributors for Cashiers of Cinema are a menagerie of creators devoted to Radical Aesthetics. Meetings are held at the dumpster behind Winkie's. Archives
December 2016
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