BFI
Meshes of the Afternoon
Authors John David Rhodes
Format paperback
Date 2020
Language English
Pages 127 pages
Description
Meshes of the Afternoon, filmed in 1943 by Maya Deren and her then husband Alexander Hammid in their bungalow above Sunset Boulevard for a mere $274.90, is the most important film in the history of American avant-garde cinema. The artistic collaboration between Deren and Hammid finds its distorted reflection in the vision of the film's tormented female protagonist. Its focus through a series of intricate and interlocking dream sequences—on female experience and the domestic sphere—links Meshes to the Hollywood melodramas of the period, while its unsettling atmosphere of dread, death and doubles makes it a counter-cinematic cousin to film noir. The film has influenced not only the subsequent history of experimental film, but also the work of Hollywood auteurs. It is a touchstone of women's film-making, of modern cinema, and of modern art.
John David Rhodes traces the film's history back into the lives of its makers, in particular that of Deren. He reads the film as a culmination of Deren's abiding interest in modernism and her intense engagement in socialist politics. Rhodes argues that, while the film remains a powerful point of reference for feminist film-makers and experimentalists, it is also an example of political art in the broadest terms.
In his foreword to this new edition, Rhodes reflects upon the film's continuing importance for and influence upon feminist and avant-garde filmmaking.
John David Rhodes is Reader in Film Studies and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film (2017) and Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini's Rome (2007), and the co-editor, with Brian Price, of On Michael Haneke (2010), with Laura Rascaroli, of Antonioni: Centenary Essays (BFI Publishing, 2011) and, with Elena Gorfinkel, of Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image (2011). He is also a founding co-editor of the journal World Picture.