79
January 8th, 2010
FILM x HEDI SLIMANE
OSCAR IMPROVISATION 1 / A FILM BY HEDI SLIMANE ON HEDISLIMANE.COM
78
September 29th, 2009
Meshes of the Afternoon
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) a stunning black and white short film by wife and husband team, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. The experimental film repeats a number of images, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean. Its such a brilliant piece of art.
The film was the product of Deren’s and Hammid’s desire to create an avant garde personal film that dealt with devastating psychological problems, like the French avant-garde films of the 1920s such as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L’Age d’Or (1930). Deren’s use of symbolism in her films relates to her father’s preoccupation with psychology and her desire to appeal to her father’s interests.[citation needed]
In 1990, Meshes of the Afternoon was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, going into the registry in the second year of voting.