The 46th Lecture on Everything tales A LOOK AT MAGIC, ALCHEMY AND THE OCCULT IN THE FILMS OF MAYA DEREN, KENNETH ANGER AND DEREK JARMAN.
On Thursday 17th July 2013, 7.30 for 8pm,at The Avenue Restaurant (upstairs), 33 West St., Bridport, £6 entrance
“For more than anything else, cinema consists of the eye for magic – that which perceives and reveals the marvelous in whatsoever it looks upon.” (Maya Deren).
Independent film makers Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger and Derek Jarman all worked outside the big commercial film industries and made poetic, enchanting films which have become classic of the cinema. They all shared an interest in magic and the occult which they expressed through their imagery. In this talk, Judith Noble introduces the work of these three film makers and explains how they wove certain magical beliefs and practices into their art. Please find more details below.
OUTSIDERS AND ENCHANTMENT: A look at magic, alchemy and the occult in the films of Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger and Derek Jarman.
Maya Deren (1917-61) has been called the Mother and the High priestess of avant-garde film. Working with only a camera operator, she made a series of extraordinary short silent films in the 1940s which changed the way we looked at cinema. Deren re-invented the language of film to create what she called “the defiance of normal time and space”. Deren was at the centre of the Greenwich Village art scene during World War 2. She was friendly with the émigré Surrealist artists who had fled Europe. She photographed Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton for magazines and played chess with Duchamp. He collaborated with her on an unfinished film (Witch’s Cradle, 1943) which compared Surrealist works to the practices of medieval magicians and witches. At the heart of Deren’s film making was a profound interest in magic and the occult. Her research into witchcraft (for author William Seabrook), ritual magic and Voudoun found its way into her films and gave them a unique ritualistic and meditative quality. Deren subsequently became initiated into Voudoun in Haiti where she made extraordinary documentary footage of Voudoun rituals and wrote a key book on Voudoun – The Divine Horsemen which is still widely read today.
Kenneth Anger (born 1927) made a series of gloriously decadent and painstakingly crafted short films between 1947 and 1981. Anger is often described as a “follower” of English occultist Aleister Crowley. He created films which worked as magical rituals on their audiences and developed his own cinematic mythos built around Lucifer, the Fallen Angel, as god of light and film; “the Light behind the lens”. His 1954 film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, is probably the first film to be inspired by the use of hallucinogenic drugs. In the 1960s Anger was a central figure in the counterculture in both the US and London and was for a while, the muse of the Rolling Stones. Counterculture figures including the Stones, Marianne Faithfull, Donald Cammell (co-director of Performance), Bobby Beausoleil and Anton La Vey appear in his films. Anger has had a profound influence on mainstream cinema, being not only a pioneer of gay film making (Scorpio Rising) but also recognised by film makers including Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and Dennis Hopper as a key source of inspiration.
Derek Jarman (1942- 94) was one of Britain’s greatest film makers. Jarman trained as a painter in the 1960s and began experimenting with Super 8 film in 1970. He went on to make a series of feature films including Jubilee, The Tempest, Caravaggio, The Last of England and many more before his life was tragically cut short by AIDS. Today Jarman is revered as a pioneer of Queer Cinema (his term). What is less well-known is that his early films stemmed from his interest in Elizabethan alchemy and the work of Elizabethan scientist and magician John Dee. Alchemy informs the structure, colour and plots of many of Jarman’s films, which are structured around the processes of alchemical transformation. John Dee appears in Jubilee (1978) and the character of Prospero in The Tempest (1980) is based also based on him.
Lectures on Everything Telephone:·· 078 33 79 56 29;· (01308) 458 116
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