Clear Dreaming : Maya Deren, Surrealism and Magic

This chapter considers Maya Deren's 'trilogy' of films- Meshes Of The Afternoon, At Land and Ritual In Transfigured Time – together with the unfinished Witch's Cradle (1943) in order to examine both Deren's relationship with Surrealism, and the role magic and the occult played in her work. It argues that it was Deren's exposure to the work of surrealist artists in New York during the Second World War and her simultaneous commitment to esoteric practice and ideas that enabled her to develop a uniquely personal form of film making that went on to inspire later feminist art and film practice of the 1970s and 1980s. The chapter examines the influence that emigre surrealist artists such as Kurt Seligmann, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst, had on Deren's work and philosophy, and the ways in which Deren's interest in the occult developed from a theoretical concern to a series of experiential practices which found their expression in her films and her writing.