Maya Deren’s Filmmaking Philosophy and A Brief Analysis of At Land

Maya Deren, a prominent figure who made substantial contributions to cinema, is widely acknowledged for her avant-garde films. With her innovative and ground-breaking approaches to filmmaking and editing, Deren pushed the boundaries and inspired countless filmmakers to come. As an independent artist, she deliberately distanced herself from Hollywood’s mainstream films and kept doing her own unique works. “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,” she once expressed. She wisely opposed to Hollywood industry and criticize the films that lacked the artistry but were big on expenses in her books. “…has been a major obstacle to the definition and development of motion pictures as a creative fine-art form.”

Against the Hollywood film industry, avant-garde movement emerged, one that rejected the traditional limits in filmmaking. Though not known as much as her filmmaking career, Deren was a versatile artist, being also a poet, photographer, dancer and writer. So, she applied her interdisciplinary knowledge into her films. Of the seven short films that she created during her lifetime, her third film, At Land has brought a different understanding to the general knowledge of filmmaking. In At Land, created with Alexandr Hackenschmied and Hella Hamon, Maya Deren has created an experimental film that showcases Deren’s creativity.

 At the beginning of the film, the woman played by Maya Deren washes out of waves onto the seashore. The footage is reversed to make it appear as if the waves are retreating. Each element in the film is symbolic, crafted with artistic precision. As the woman climbs a tree and passes into different spaces, the transitions become metaphors for psychological and social experiences. Memorable elegant dinner scene is a great visual metaphor for social alienation. She crawls across the table, yet remains unnoticed and ignored. The film’s editing is abrupt and poetic: a dining table transforms into a jungle; a chess piece appears on a beach. Though it is not known to be the explicit inspiration since it is a medieval motif, symbolic and dream-like chess scene at the beach share thematic elements with Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. In addition, the editing carries similarities with Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), Deren’s debut film. Her films provoke sensations and dive deep into the character’s struggle and her search for self. The protagonist comes across in various selves throughout the journey, indicating a fragmentation of identity. In the film, she uses the technique, eyeline match, where there is a visual connection between the character and what they are looking at. This technique, while common today, was groundbreaking in the context of her time. She once said:

‘’My films might be called experimental, referring to the use of the medium itself. In these films, the camera is not an observant, recording eye in the customary fashion. The full dynamics and expressive potentials of the total medium are ardently dedicated to creating the most accurate metaphor for the meaning. ‘’

Deren’s works and her vision prioritizes artistic purpose rather than seeing storytelling only as commercial and a source of profit. Her innovative approach not only challenges the conventional cinema but also redefines social roles and perspectives. At Land is a surreal and artistic attempt to bridge reality to imagination and to form a whole entity through experiments with time and space.