On 8 March, also known as International Women's Day, SSE Art Initiative begin screening the experimental thriller Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren, produced in collaboration with filmmaker and cinematographer Alexander Hammid. The film is widely considered as one of the most influential experimental films of the last one hundred years and in 2015, the BBC named the film the 40th greatest American movie ever made.
Meshes of the Afternoon, reiterates several themes, including images of a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, an enigmatic cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, and several other things. Through creative editing and photography, the film invokes both tension, curiosity and fear – classic hallmarks of the psychoanalytic underpinnings of surrealist films in the 20th century.
Surrealism was a way to tap Freund´s theories of the subconscious in art. Surrealism also paved the way for connecting desires and dreams to economics action through marketing with Salvador Dali ´s celebration of capitalism in advertising, as a well-known example.
Moderna Museet has graciously granted permission to SSE Art Initiative to show classics from its art film collection of which Meshes of the Afternoon is the fifth installment.
