What do you like about Maya Deren’s works?

…The nature of the human mind is such that it tries to build concepts out of each moment, and so, therefore, if I think the concept it can build is interesting and poignant, then I’ll stick with it. – Nathaniel Dorsky

Before you start writing the response, please:

• Watch Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren, 1943, USA) in Collected Experimental Films (01:25 – 14:45)
• Watch At Land (Deren, 1944, USA) in Collected Experimental Films (14:50 – 29:37)
• Read some of Maya Deren’sAn Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, The Alicat Book Shop Press, 1946.

• Watch The Guns of the Trees (Mekas, 1962, USA)
• hile-‘U’-Wait DVD liner notes along with The Mekas Question My Being or My Life? by Robert Temple, Mekas Howls Against the World by Alberto Moravia, New York Times Review by Eugene Archer, Chicago Sun Times Review by Roger Ebert, and Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg.) All on this PDF Document

Response 9:

1. What do you like about Maya Deren’s works? (150-300 words)

2. Choose to write about Jonas Mekas. Choose a couple of ideas that stood out to you from each from the readings, interviews, etc. Write about one of their films and pick a scene from one and talk about your emotional reaction to it, then put it in context with the interviews and other written material from the list, discuss what it means to be experimental in the film you watched. (400 words)