The Young and the Beautiful: Maya Deren + Anna De Sutter

“Each individual is the center of a personal vortex; and the aggressive variety and enormity of the adventures which swirl about and confront him are unified only by his personal identity… The integrity of the individual identity is counterpointed to the volatile character of a relativistic universe.” – Maya Deren

In the programme series ​‘The Young & the Beautiful’ young filmmakers relate to the experimental canon. In The Sublimation of Anna De Sutter, Anna switches between her role as maker, protagonist and spectator. Sometimes she presents herself as a loving granddaughter or a vulnerable young woman, while at other times she reveals herself to be a self-assured diva. With its Do-It-Yourself attitude, her self-confident fever dream alludes to Maya Deren’s debut film Meshes of the Afternoon, in which duplication and bizarre inserts of everyday objects also determine the atmosphere. In this surrealist experiment – because ​“art must be an experiment,” according to Deren – peacefullness turns into disorientation and threat. In Deren’s second short film At Land, a woman, played by Deren, washes ashore on a beach. During the dreamy journey that follows, she meets other people and other versions of herself. Deren once said that the film is about the fight to preserve one’s own identity. For At Land she cooperated with composer John Cage and poet and film critic Parker Tyler, who also feature in the film

Program: Atelier OFFoff