Circe – Experimental Platform for Dance and Theatre presents At the CCA – Center of Contemporary Art – Tbilisi Experimental Shorts by Maya Deren and Public lecture of Nini Shvelidze, Maya Deren’s Choreocinema.“My cinema is women’s cinema, because my films are characterized by the sense of time that characterizes women. Men’s strength is in their immediacy, they are creatures of the present, and women’s strength is in their waiting, which they have to live… This moment is an important moment for my films, this sense of time belongs to women and it characterizes my films like no one else” – Maya Deren.
Maya Deren, celebrated as a choreographer, dancer, actor, poet, film theoretician, and photographer – a pioneering figure in American avant-garde cinema during the 1940s and 1950s.
Her experimental black-and-white films blend elements of choreography, dance, and ethnography.
In Deren’s avant-garde shorts, the camera becomes a partner to the dancers, capturing their movements with a huge intimacy.
Movement and dance take center stage in Deren’s “choreographic cinema,” where she tries to make dance the whole world.
Through works like “Ritual in Transfigured Time,” “A Study in Choreography for Camera,” and “The Very Eye of Night,” Deren delves deep into the language of bodies and movement, utilizing the camera as a tool to explore the intricate beauty of human motion.
Supporter of the project: Tbilisi City Hall.
Where: Center of Contemporary Art – Tbilisi
When: 25 May, 20:00.
Attendance is free.
Nini Shvelidze – Georgian film researcher, PhD student, and invited lecturer at Ilia State University in Film Studies. She is a member of FIPRESCI; Co-editor and author at Cinexpress; Film programmer at the Kutaisi International Short Film Festival (2020-2023); Jury member at the Warsaw Film Festival, Lago Film Fest, Ljubljana Short Film Festival and Dresden Film Fest.