Avant-Garde Visions in Meshes of the Afternoon
01:00:07
	Narrator: Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid is arguably the most important American avant-garde film. It uses a dreamlike structure to explore themes of anxiety, identity, and desire. Avant-garde films are ideal for learning about film form as elements of mise-en-scéne, cinematography, editing, and sound are liberated from their conventional uses and thus become more visible. A title card at the beginning of the film states the place and time; Hollywood, 1943. Hollywood films were
01:00:40
	becoming darker at that time and the bungalow setting and high contrast lighting of Meshes give the feeling of a Hollywood film noir. But this film is a nightmare told from a woman’s point of view. She enters and explores a hillside bungalow before seemingly falling asleep and dreaming. At the end of the film a man enters the same home to find the woman’s body covered in seaweed and the shards of a mirror.
01:01:11
	Narrator: The film uses editing techniques, like matches on action at the door and point-of-view shots of the interior, to convey the subjectivity of the woman (who is played by Deren herself). While the cutting follows conventional continuity editing rules to an extent, there is something uncanny and dreamlike about the linkages. The symbolism in the film also contributes to its dreamlike quality. Meshes features several recurring objects, each acquiring its own meaning through repeated appearances and associations. For example, the flower symbolizes desire and beauty.
01:01:43
	A knife, used for cutting bread, also connotes menace. Mirrors in the film are used to refract identity and also to symbolize death. The work of associating objects in the film resembles what Freud referred to as the dream-work. Meshes displaces and condenses meaning as the objects are substituted for each other or converge in other objects like the mirrored glasses the woman wears as she strides towards her own image with the knife.
01:02:18
	Narrator: For our purposes, let’s focus on the motif of the key. What does the key mean in the film and how does it work as a key to unlocking the film’s meaning? After the woman finds the bungalow door locked, she extracts a key from her purse, only to drop it. We watch as it bounces down the steps just out of reach. When she retrieves the key and turns it in the lock several moments later, we feel a sense of foreboding.
01:02:46
	Narrator: She finds the house as if people have just left. A knife balanced and a loaf of bread also falls, echoing the key.
01:02:58
	Narrator: As the woman explores the space, she seems at times to be impeded by the architecture and at times to float above it. What kind of space has the key given her—and us—access to?
01:03:16
	Narrator: Soon the protagonist has her second encounter with the key. She opens her mouth and, seemingly unsurprised, extracts it from within. This image seems to suggest that there are no clear boundaries between the internal and the external. The key next appears in the middle of the table after a jump cut from the knife. Curiously there are now three Maya Derens seated at the table. The first Maya picks up the key, but it jumps back onto the table.
01:03:46
	The second does the same. Then the third, or the real Maya—we know this because of the use of point of view—takes the key and her hand turns black. In the next cut the key transforms back into the knife, causing the Mayas to react with shock.
01:04:15
	Narrator: The knife, the symbolically charged object, initiates the film’s last cycle of inside-outside oppositions. The knife is used to break a mirror shattering the images that seem to lock the woman in, but possibly destroying her singularity as well. We see waves washing over the shards of the mirror, bringing the outside in. If the key at the start of the film symbolizes granted passage between the outside and the inside, the final image of the outside
01:04:44
	debris invading the inside suggests that perhaps it is not necessary to have a key in order to pass from one space to another. Indeed, this final image reminds us of how easily the film’s editing can do just that. Of course there are many other dimensions to Meshes that can be explored. There are many other images that can act as a key to reading this film, but focusing on how editing relates one motif, the key, with other images to create possible meanings reveals some of the
01:05:14
	pleasure of interpreting experimental films.