I went to see Maya Deren’s Witch’s Cradle at the Met Breuer for my post. The film was assisted by Marcel Duchamp, i’m not exactly sure what role he played in its creation, besides being a subject, but from what I was told the film exclusively belongs to Deren. The film is silent and in black and white, assuming that was the easiest method to go about creating an experimental film in the mid 40s. The film seemed to have an apocalyptic vibe, though I wasn’t so sure — I suppose music would have helped discern the meaning attempting to be conveyed but it was silent.

From what I can remember there was a lot of slow moving parts, that of magic and MC Escher-esque images that would glide across the screen (presumably made by Duchamp) while a woman watched them in a sort of awe.

By the end of the short film (approximately 13 minutes) the woman had somehow become a witch, or ritualized, with a pentagram with detailing sketched into her forehead. Confused as if she woke up with it from a dream, she looked in a mirror at it with grief and a somewhat sad acceptance. The film was presented as one of Deren’s unfinished works so I can’t really rate it or give a thorough opinion since presumably this is not the form she would have liked it to be shown in.

What I found interesting was that the entire film was filmed in a small area, I looked it up after viewing and saw that it was all filmed in a museum gallery space. This made me think of our class discussion on “the studio” and how this is essentially a piece made in that setting — creating a film with available or created figures instead of using the external world as an object or setting.

For this short write up I went to Rutgers Film Co-op to attend a viewing of a few Harry Smith films. I made it just in time to watch Heaven and Earth Magic. Prior to watching the film, or attending yesterday’s class, I wasn’t too knowledgeable on Smith and his work; what I was told about this particular film (and about much of his work) is that it was cutout animation style and experimental.

Having some understanding of cutout animation and how difficult it is to make, especially during the time in which this film was created, the first thing I noticed while watching the film was how incredibly time consuming it must have been to create. The film starts out rather simple with sound effects to go with the motions he creates on screen but these motions are working within 24 frame per second intervals, making what I was watching even more incredible.

During the first few minutes I immediately thought of Monty Python, the animator of the sequences in that film had to be inspired by Smith — the fluidity and direction is just too similar and connected even though the style of animation is not.

With all that being said, I wandered for much of the film after the first 15 minutes or so, which is to say it felt too long and tedious for what it was — which may have been the point of the film in the first place, one with it’s strange plot. It was obvious that the film took months, even years to make, but it didn’t feel like something to be watched on a big screen — more something to be watched in a museum at one’s own pleasure. If I was a curator I would have the film playing in a museum in an exhibit on its own, perhaps next to other works of his or paintings by other arts, so that civilian viewers can come and go as they please while not being held captive to watch the entire 60+ minute film.

This is not to say the film isn’t brilliant, but the setting just didn’t feel right and it doesn’t appear to be something that must be watched start to finish.