In this film, Maya Deren takes the approaches to framing, motion, and space she used in "A Study in Choreography for Cameras" and gives it a theme and relevance while simultaneously showing her deep-felt love for various forms of dance. What's striking about the dancer she films this time is that his movements combine aspects of dance, martial arts, and meditation, creating a much more mesmerizing and beautiful work than "Choreography."
This short film doesn't, however, speak much about violence the way its commonly perceived or represented. Violence here is neither glorious like an action, adventure, war, or western movie, nor is it disturbing and destructive as its commonly realized in antiwar, avant-garde, and drama films. In fact, this movie isn't very violent at all, even when the dancer gyrates about with his sword. Only during a few precise cuts do we get a sense of "violence" as it's commonly dictated, which makes me unsure whether Maya Deren actually isn't dealing with violence despite her title or has a completely different opinion on what violence is or states based off of both her love of fluent motion and the idea of martial "art" created by the dancer.
This film is mesmerizing and intoxicating, but as a meditation on violence it's arguable.
--PolarisDiB
This short film doesn't, however, speak much about violence the way its commonly perceived or represented. Violence here is neither glorious like an action, adventure, war, or western movie, nor is it disturbing and destructive as its commonly realized in antiwar, avant-garde, and drama films. In fact, this movie isn't very violent at all, even when the dancer gyrates about with his sword. Only during a few precise cuts do we get a sense of "violence" as it's commonly dictated, which makes me unsure whether Maya Deren actually isn't dealing with violence despite her title or has a completely different opinion on what violence is or states based off of both her love of fluent motion and the idea of martial "art" created by the dancer.
This film is mesmerizing and intoxicating, but as a meditation on violence it's arguable.
--PolarisDiB