Meshes of the Afternoon
This classic of the American experimental cinema has been called “a surrealist nightmare film,” in which Deren plays a young woman “who becomes shaken by a series of small incidents, including a figure disappearing around the curve of the road, a key dropping, and a large knife found on a table. The environment of the house then appears to rock back and forth, throwing the girl about; the figure who disappears around the curve is seen to have a mirror face; and the knife appears everywhere until the girl, evidently, kills herself with it. Deren and Hammid acted in and photographed the film in Los Angeles. Hammid, a well-known maker of documentaries who had come from Europe, whose original name was Hackenschmied, was married to Deren at the time.” --Sheldon Renan
• Directed and Photographed by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. Sound by Teiji Ito. (1943, 14 mins, Print from PFA Collection)

At Land
“...in which a girl, again Deren, is born of the sea, adventures through ‘life,' and returns to the sea. In one of its most memorable scenes she crawls on her stomach down the middle of a banquet table with people dining on both sides.”
• Directed by Maya Deren. Technical assistance: Hella Heyman, Alexander Hammid. (1944, 15 mins, silent, Print from Grove)

A Study in Choreography for the Camera
“Through an exploitation of cinematic techniques, the camera creates its own space and time, acting not as a recording instrument but as a creative component of the choreography. The dancer's movement is uninterrupted, his environment changes; time is unaffected, space is distorted.” --Cinema 16
• Directed by Maya Deren, with Talley Beatty. (1945, 4 mins, silent, Print from Grove)

A Ritual in Transfigured Time
“A poetic psychological study, achieved by acceleration and deceleration of time, relating of unrelated gestures, repetition of complex patterns unrealizable in actuality.” --Cinema 16. Jesse Zunser of Cue called this film “A memorable, exquisitely poetic, heroically tragic picturization of the emotions linked to the intensity of a girl's frustrated search for companionship in the real and unreal world in which she lives.”
• Directed by Maya Deren. Photographed by Hella Heyman. Choreographic collaboration: Frank Westbrook. With Rita Christiani, Frank Westbrook. (1945-6, 15 mins, silent, Print from Grove)

Meditation on Violence
Deren's film of Chao-Li Chi in the movements of formalized Chinese boxing, seeing them as a mesmerizing dance. “A challenging commentary on all violence, declaring that in a sense man fights a duel with himself as an elusive opponent.” --Parker Tyler
• Directed by Maya Deren. (1948, 12 mins, Print from Grove)

The Very Eye of Night
“A celestial cine-ballet of night, filmed in the negative. The dancers, freed of the earth's horizon, become cosmic and four-dimensional, advancing, as if planets in the night sky, by the blind incalculable accuracies of sleepwalkers.” --Cinema 16
• Directed by Maya Deren. (1959, 15 mins, Print from Grove)