Meshes Of The Afternoon was one of my favorite things that we watched all semester, so I was curious to see what some of Maya Deren’s other work looks like. I decided to watch her 1944 short film, At Land, which did not disappoint.
There were a lot of similarities between At Land and Meshes Of The Afternoon. They both incorporate the ocean into their stories, At Land more so since she wakes up washed onto shore and is most shot at the beach, and there are multiple versions of Maya again. Instead of chasing a key like she was in Meshes Of The Afternoon, she was chasing the pawn of a chess set. The scene of the pawn falling down the cracks with water was just like the one of the key dropping down the stairs. I’m also not 100% sure if the music was part of the original film or if it was just added on by someone else, but the sound helped add to the suspense that I felt in both of her shorts that I’ve seen now too. You’re never totally sure what’s going to come next. There were also scenes in both films of a person walking or running away. The one scene that I was most curious about was when Maya came across two girls playing chess on the beach, and she ended up rubbing their hair and all of them were smiling (pretty sure she bit her lip in there at some point too). I know she was unhappy with her marriage in Meshes Of The Afternoon, so I was kind of curious what this part was saying. Another one of my favorite scenes was when she was crawling on the table and imagined moving the chess pieces at the end with her eyes – it was very Queen’s Gambit coded and I thought it was a very interesting moment. Overall, I really really liked it and I would highly recommend it to anyone else who enjoyed Meshes Of The Afternoon!
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