Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Categorisation: The Afternoon Grid (1943) is an avant-garde experimental short film that stitches several poetically interesting images with music. It tells about a woman’s multiple dreams in the afternoon, reflects the female’s psychological state and survival situation, shapes the character’s thoughts from the background of the character’s growth and the conflict between the characters, and forms a climax.
Form and Function: Maya Deren uses films to create temporal and spatial artworks, using the relationship between space and time to create an experience and feeling for the audience.
Process: Filming and editing techniques that deliberately alienate the audience from the image, such as quick editing, intentional out-of-focus, collage juxtaposition, and even painting and scratching directly on the film.
Formal Elements: In the short film, the actress’s ideologies can simultaneously appear in the same space and time. This is Deren’s manipulation of time and space in the way of film editing to create an incomplete reality, which is not only a kind of imagination but also expresses the actual state of the spirit.
Marin, D. (2022) Analysis: Meshes of the afternoon (1943): A Spiralling Lucid Nightmare, Maya Deren, & A dialogue with the unconscious, DIANA MARIN. Available at: https://dianamarin.com/2019/12/19/meshes-of-the-afternoon-1943-spiralling-nightmare-maya-deren-dialogue-with-the-unconscious/ (Accessed: January 6, 2023).
Riebe, C. (2019) A quick look at Maya Deren’s meshes of the afternoon, ScreenAnarchy. Available at: https://screenanarchy.com/2019/07/a-quick-look-at-maya-derens-meshes-of-the-afternoon-contrib.html (Accessed: January 6, 2023).
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