Avant Garde

Avant Garde means "ahead of the crowd" its cutting edge or experimental short films,
they were considered an art movement in the late 1940's to 1950. Avant Garde dirctor Maya Deren created short films that were had a anti mainstream stance, within her films she promotes the idea of artistic license and creative freedom.


 This film was originally a silent film, but later after the film had been made her husband Teiji played instruments to accompany the moving images this became the soundtrack, the music adds mood and atmosphere helps us as the audience to understand fully the messages she is displaying.
The film gives us a sense of dreaming the character has a floaty walk about her and the idea of her falling asleep and not waking up suggests this is a dream. The camera trickery used is well before its time we can see how people have developed technical special effects from this film, the slow motion running and the stop frame animation is basic but still very effective. 


The imagery in this film is about death and choices, this would of been a sensitive subject because of the era taking into account world war two, this just shows how many boundaries and creativity is being used in this film.