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by Maya DEREN
1944 / 16mm / b&w / silent / 1 screen / 12' 30
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THE WITCH'S CRADLE is an unfinished Maya Deren film made in the Guggenheim Gallery during a surrealist "Art of this Century" exhibit. It was assembled long after her death by staffers within the preservation department at Anthology Film Archives. – David Lewis
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A collaboration between Maya Deren and Marcel Duchamp, THE WITCH'S CRADLE is an unfinished film consisting of a choreographed set of movements between the figures (played by Marcel Duchamp and Pajorita Matta) and the camera. It was filmed in Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in New York City, inside the environment made by Marcel Duchamp for the New York Surrealistic Section in 1942. Intended as an exploration of the magical qualities of surrealist objects present in the gallery, the film remains incomplete and is considered lost.
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"This film, which was never completed, was inspired by the architectural structure and paintings and objects in the gallery. I was concerned with the impression that surrealistic objects were, in a sense, the cabalistic symbols of the 20th Century; for the surrealist artists, like the feudal magicians and witches, were motivated by a desire to deal with the real forces underlying events (the feudal evil spirits are similar to the modern sub-conscious drives) and to discard the validity of surface and apparent causation. The magicians were also concerned with the defiance of normal time (mainly projection into the past and divination of the future) and with normal space (disappearance one place and appearance another, or the familiar broomstick); so also the surrealist painters and poets. And it seemed to me that the camera was peculiarly suited to delineate this form of magic." – Maya Deren, Program Notes on three early films, Film Culture No. 39, Winter 1965
2 PRINTS IN DISTRIBUTION
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distribution format |
Digital file on server (FHD) |
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screen |
1,37 (single screen) |
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speed |
24 fps |
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sound |
silent |
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rental fee |
55,00 € |
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distribution format |
DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
|
screen |
1,37 (single screen) |
|
speed |
24 fps |
|
sound |
silent |
|
rental fee |
55,00 € |
