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.