Maya Deren - Meshes of the Afternoon

This short experimental film from 1943 by experimental director Maya Deren and her husband had a fairly large influence on our own film from it's themes and use of symbolic imagery to it's style and form.

"This film is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does not record an event which could be witnessed by other persons. Rather, it reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience." - Maya Deren


Our film ended up being a similar study of an individual and their subconscious experience. Through similar techniques (having multiple of the same actor in a single shot, the use of symbolic imagery such as mirrors) we attempted to display many facets of the human psyche. Deren presents a series of dream sequences that interlock in which the protagonist is often watching herself repeat actions. We use this same technique in our film to show the different parts of the psyche interacting with each other (or not interacting as the case may be).


Deren's film is interesting to me in a number of ways. I very much enjoyed it's implementation of shadows early on and the use of the camera as sympathetic to the protagonist. There are parts of the film where the camera seems to move with the protagonist and feel the world as she feels it which, in turn, makes the spectator feel it also. Deren uses jump-cuts occasionally to transport people or objects from one part of a shot to another without proper continuity. We also used this technique within our film making our protagonist appear or disappear etc. This technique is a good way to indicate that time does not work the same way within the world of the film and also to juxtapose images and settings next to each other. Deren also uses the technique of cropping to have multiple versions of herself in the same scene.


There are many symbolic images in the film such as the knife, the flower and the telephone. These are used to foreshadow the events later in the film and as metaphors for subjects such as sex and loneliness. In our film we used mirrors as symbolic of the inner workings of the Freudian id and the camera as the superego. These also have other meanings, such as paranoia and narcissism.


Structurally there are some similarities between our films also. Deren layers her dreams on top of each other, destroying any sense of actual time (and, in fact, space through her technique. Something we did not really attempt). These build to the climax of the shocking image of the protagonist having seemingly slashed her own throat. Similarly our images often layer on top of each other and build to the climax of the mirror being smashed.


The soundtrack from Meshes of the Afternoon, while not very appealing to me, did influence how we used sound in our film. Much of the sound in the music is edited to the images and this is something we did very carefully and precisely. There are also sounds in the music of Deren's film that are representative of noises happening on screen. I attempted similar things in my soundtrack. I also attempted to have sections of the music that have no time signatures and, in fact, often different time signatures overlap each other. These combine to create a feeling that time is not working in a way that is familiar to us. Teiji Ito's soundtrack has a similar effect.


I think it's plain to see that Deren's work had a strong influence on our own.