Meshes Of The Afternoon Analysis

To begin, the idea of two realisms is first illustrated in the opening sequence of the film and continues throughout the length of the story. For example, the neighborhood shown in the film is

Surrealism is a movement that built off of the burgeoning look into art, psychology, and the workings of the mind. Popularly associated with the works of Salvador Dali, Surrealist art takes imagery and ideology and creates correlation where there is none, creating new forms of art. In this essay I will look to explore the inception of the surrealist movement, including the Surrealist Manifesto, to stress the importance of these artists and their work in the 20th century and beyond. I also will look to films from our European Cinema course to express how films incorporate the influence of surrealism both intentionally and unintentionally.

To support this idea, Bordwell illustrates how art cinema motivates its narratives differently, through two principles: realism and authorial expressivity. Firstly he proposes the notion that art films reflect realism in their characters, space, and time. Psychologically complex characters are present in real worlds dealing with true-to-life situations. Art cinema is concerned with the characters ‘reaction’ to these situations, rather than their ‘action’. Thus it bares an element of psychological subjectivity as the characters survey the world they are in, which aids the realisation of the distress of

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. Thesis. N.d. N.p.: Laura Mulvey, 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. NG Communications, 2006. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. .

In the first scene of Paul Morrissey’s 1968 film Flesh, the viewer is taken on a brief journey through the streets of New York City. The perspective taken is that from a passive observer looking into the life of the main character. The camera does not tamper with the images nor try to impose new meaning on them – we see the sequence of events as it actually unfolds. Throughout the film clip, a main theme is centered on the banality of the protagonist’s existence, and his restless state is reflected within both technical and organic aspects of the clip.

Dystopia and Utopia can be explored in many forms of media such as artwork, film, music, poetry and even dance. The easiest and most vivid way to depict these genres to the audience is in films. Films specifically incorporate visual symbolism through colors and settings and screenshot width and filters. Films may also incorporate a subliminal message to the reader through background music used in different scenes. Displaying utopian and dystopian societies through film leaves some imagination to the audience while allowing them to visually compare with the real world around them. For the purpose of exploring aspects of utopia and dystopia through films, I have chosen the films Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1927) and the episode Nosedive from

The widely seminal work by Maya Deren, titled Meshes of the Afternoon, starts when an artificial looking hand puts down a flower on the pathway. The hand, including the attached arm, then pops out of existence, which immediately alerts the viewer that the film is not a literal storytelling piece of work. they symbols within the following fourteen minutes further drill holes into the viewers subconscious, in which images speak louder compared to words, which created among the most well-known short films of all times. The film is an effective piece of art of all times, which brought a unique interpretation of storytelling within the film industry.

Agnes Varda is not only one of the few female directors of new wave cinema; she is also credited as having helped create the genre. Her short film La Point–Courte is considered by some as the first new wave film. Her first full length movie, Cleo 5 to 7 falls within this genre as well. It is the story of a young woman dying of cancer and how she sees the world in the context of time. We follow the singer Cleo as she changes into the woman Flora and as she does so she begins to look at time in a different manner. It is the way time is represented through the camera shots which really make this film part of its new wave genre.

In a film review by James Berardinelli he states that “the non-chronological approach creates an intellectual puzzle”. (James Berardinelli ) He also gives an explanation as to why the director Perelman perhaps chose to take on this particular style of film directing for the movie. For instance, he describes that the film’s cinematography as being “composed of a series of memorable insert shots that show the details of everyday life we often don't notice. If nothing else, it can be said that The Life Before Her Eyes offers variety for the eyes.” (James Berardinelli) It is true that the beauty and complexity of the cinematography and non-chronological order of scenes helps to give this drama both cohesion and clarity but also helps to create an important character connection between different life stages of both the teenage and the adult

Cléo from 5 to 7, directed by Agnes Varda, is a film about one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the possibility of her potential illness. Not only is Cléo struggling with her physical health, but she is also dealing with her beauty and the consequences of being an attractive woman in the modern world of the 1960s. When examined through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” theory, another aspect of the film comes to light. The film seems to objectify Cléo and thus trivialize her struggles with others’ perceptions of her throughout the film by adhering to the construct of the male gaze. Although Cléo from 5 to 7 appears to play into the construct of the male gaze through the repeated objectification of Cléo, it actually subverts this idea and instead confronts the viewer, and the notion of women as passive objects to be viewed.

Body Movies is the piece which grew my interest in learning more of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer because of the co-interaction between an art piece and its participant. The lack of rules and pure enablement for public expression frees the environment and allows fun. Although these three projects all had rules and not that same freedom they are vehicles for cultural expressionism which make them powerful tools.

There are many interpretations regarding what defines a ‘realist film’. One particular film movement that is hailed as being realist is Italian Neorealism. The Italian Neorealist movement came about in an attempt to move away from the cultural heritage of Fascism post World War Two, as such the effects of the war on the working class can be seen within the reality of the cinema at the time. Bicycle Thieves (1948) is often referenced as a classic Italian Neorealist film. André Bazin in particular, praises it for it’s neorealist approach and goes so far as to hail it as ‘a true masterpiece’ of Italian neorealist cinema.

Julie Taymore, the maker of the film, has a very strange and sensational style. I have watched a film of hers before and her

Unfortunately, I had to stop watching Stan Brakhage's Black Ice and Stan Brakhage's Mothlight due my seizure disorder. Actually, I found both Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou and Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon interesting. In Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou falls in with the surrealist cinema. Granted, it also is dream-like nightmare with the close up shots of the knife/blade, the cutting of the eyeball, and ants out of the hand to add drama. In fact, my imagination ran wild the first time I watched Un Chien Andalou because when the man was on the balcony looking at the moon, I was waiting for him to turn into a wolf or some kind of creature, but instead the violence of cutting the woman’s eyeball. Next, the behind shot that merged into

The narrative structure in Meshes of the Afternoon (1942) is unique in that it uses abstract symbolism to transfer all narrative information to the audience, forcing the audience to actively engage with the narrative in order to piece together the plot and how it relates the story, if there is one being told at all. Meshes is told with distinctive narrative structure that relies on different interpretations for one to understand the purpose it serves as a work of cinema. The purpose of Meshes can be seen to represent, embody, or exemplify possible ways of seeing and being in the world itself. The artisanal and avant-garde style of Meshes, with its unclear chronological sequencing coupled with its overt referencing to a dream state, serves to explore the way in which director Maya Deren felt about her world, one she allowed us to peer into through the lens of her camera. Meshes also relies on its aesthetics as its primary form of language, with symbolic communication contributing to its poetic form. Meshes also largely employs an expressive form of emphasis through its use of mis-en-scene, as the entire film can be seen as the subconscious expression of Maya Deren’s thoughts of her life, specifically of her relationship with her husband Alexander Hammid. Meshes also uses a poetic form of emphasis in terms of the style of its narrative, with each repetition of actions serving as a stanza for the film, which unfolds in the form of a poem.