Screenings: 19 November 2026 Thursday 20:00 / 24 December 2026 Thursday 20:00
Part 2 presents At Land, Meditation on Violence, A Study in Choreography for Camera and Witch’s Cradle consecutively. Total running time: 42 minutes.
* The screening will feature live musical accompaniment by Mine Pakel.
Director: Maya Deren
Screenplay: Maya Deren
Cast: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid, Hella Hammid, John Cage, Parker Tyler, Philip Lamantia
USA / 1944 / 14 min. / Black and white / DCP / Silent
A woman washed ashore (Maya Deren) crawls up a tree trunk on the beach. Reaching the top, she unexpectedly finds herself on a long dining table at a bourgeois gathering. A film about “the struggle to maintain one’s own identity”, in Deren’s words, At Land uses the possibilities of the camera to explore the limitless permutations of reality and the relationship between space and time. Its cast includes John Cage, Parker Tyler and Philip Lamantia, all of whom left their mark on the American art world of the 1940s.
Director: Maya Deren
Screenplay: Maya Deren, Chao Li Chi
Cast: Chao Li Chi
USA / 1949 / 12 min. / Black and white / DCP / Silent
In Meditation on Violence, Maya Deren approaches actor and dancer Chao-Li Chi’s performance of Wu Tang martial arts through ritual and dance. Playing with cinematic time in a manner familiar from Deren’s work, the film also blurs the line between violence and beauty.
Director: Maya Deren
Screenplay: Maya Deren
Cast: Talley Beatty
USA / 1945 / 4 min. / Black and white / DCP / Silent
While studying Haitian rituals alongside the celebrated choreographer Katherine Dunham, known as the queen of modern African American dance, Maya Deren met Dunham’s student Talley Beatty. A Study in Choreography for Camera emerged from this encounter. In this study, which inaugurates Deren’s films centered on dance and choreography and continues the leaps in time and space seen in At Land, camera and body are liberated from spatial boundaries.
Director: Maya Deren
Screenplay: Maya Deren
Cast: Marcel Duchamp, Pajorita Matta
USA / 1944 / 12 min. / Black and white / DCP / Silent
Maya Deren’s “unfinished” film Witch’s Cradle follows a web-like thread as it winds around different people’s hands. Shaped by recurring ritualistic images, it creates an uncanny dream atmosphere. Among its cast is the avant-garde pioneer Marcel Duchamp.