NMED 3850 Experimental Film Production

NMED 3850 Today’s Class… Maya Deren Lisa Steele Technical Questions

NMED 3850 Experimental Production and Formal Experimentation –Maya Deren ( ) Born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant- garde filmmaker of the1940s and 1950s In 1943, she adopted the name Maya Deren. Maya is the name of the mother of the historical Buddha as well as the dharmic concept of reality being but an illusion. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer. In 1943, Deren began making a film with Marcel Duchamp

NMED 3850 Experimental Production and Formal Experimentation –Maya Deren ( ) In the early 1940s, Deren purchased a used 16 mm Bolex camera to make her first and most well-known film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), in collaboration with her second husband Alexander Hammid Meshes of the Afternoon is recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film. Originally a silent film with no dialogue, music for the film was composed by Deren's third husband Teiji Ito in 1957 In 1947 she won the Grand Prix Internationale for 16 mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival for Meshes of the Afternoon.

NMED 3850 Experimental Production and Formal Experimentation –Lisa Steele was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1947 and immigrated to Canada in –An important pioneer of video art in Canada since the early 1970s, Steele has shown internationally at the Venice Biennale (1980), the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the National Gallery of Canada.

NMED 3850 Experimental Production and Formal Experimentation –Since the early 1980s Lisa Steele has worked exclusively in collaboration with her husband Kim Tomczak –In 2005 Steele and Tomczak won the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts –Birthday Suit: Scars and Defects is part of the experimental production master canon and is a seminal piece in the Nationally Gallery of Canada collection

NMED 3850 Experimental Production Composition –Whether works are experimental in technique or formally composition is vital –Recurring aesthetic include but are not limited to: Setting Study of the human form Abstract representations of the everyday –Try and incorporate depictions that experiment with composition of the above- mentioned if appropriate