Dancer, ethnographer, philosopher, and “visual poet” Maya Deren began making films in the early 1940s. In these striking psychodramas, Deren often places herself in the frame, navigating a path through anxiety-laden Freudian environs, dreamscapes of the seemingly unphotographable. In her first and most famous work, Meshes of the Afternoon, a woman (Deren) dreams within dreams about suicide, about a phallic attack by her mate (Hammid), and about inanimate objects that assume threatening aspects. This seminal work gave birth to the American avant-garde film movement of the postwar era.

This experiment in time and space features Deren as an alienated figure, unable to integrate with the social milieu that surrounds her.

This unfinished film, shot at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery (the prime exhibitor of Surrealist works in New York), was inspired by both the architecture of the space itself and the art works it contained. Deren used her camera to delineate the magic of what she called these “cabalistic symbols of the twentieth century.”

Deren’s exploration of female sexuality and the human psyche is given form here through figures inspired by Greek mythology. This elaborate “choreography for the camera” transforms everyday movements into dancelike passages with the assistance of slow-motion effects.

This charming depiction of the romantic encounter between a male and female cat who decide to take up housekeeping together was made by Deren’s second husband, Alexander Hammid.