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Reflections on Maya Deren's Forgotten Film

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Ok Hee Jeong
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Abstract

American avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren is highly acclaimed as one of the pioneers of film dance, but her final film The Very Eye of Night (1952–55, released 1959) is largely neglected in the dance field. In that silenced, marginalized cases shed light on the discursive contour of the field, I examine not only Deren's intention of the film but also assumptions and rationales upon which scholars and critics ignored the film. I argue that the medium-specific and modernist concept of dance film, which Deren herself initially introduced into the field, contributes to the film's ignorance in dance scholarship. Also, the use of ballet is another impeding factor as its anti-gravitational quality and classical implication do not befit textual and sociocultural expectations of dance scholars for Deren's film.

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 40 , supplement S1: Dance Studies and Global Feminisms , 2008 , pp. 124 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008

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References

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