Maya Deren's unfinished short film from 1951, "Ensemble for Somnambulists", set to DeVotchKa's "How It Ends".Maya Deren's unfinished short film from 1951, "Ensemble for Somnambulists", set to DeVotchKa's "How It Ends".Maya Deren's unfinished short film from 1951, "Ensemble for Somnambulists", set to DeVotchKa's "How It Ends".
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The short begins and ends with a field of stars in a black night sky--not actual stars, mind you, but what appears to be a pinscreen or pinpricks of light bleeding through a black fabric.
Between the bookended imagery of artificial stars is, I suppose, an "Ensemble for Somnambulists," consisting of dancers pirouetting in and out of frame, the very active camera panning and tilting passed them. The camera flows and moves at erratic and canted angles at various points in a somewhat disorienting and kaleidoscopic fashion. Because the dancers are a white tone and the surroundings are a pure black, it appears as if they're flowing through a void, and this often obscures when the scenes are cut--with many scenes given the impression of being much longer takes. There's nothing very conceptual in this short. It's a minimalistic experiment. Nothing more, but for what it is, it's rather enchanting, with the freeform camerawork and the ghostly dancers, lending it an interesting atmosphere. Like most of her work that I'm familiar with, there's no sound.
This is a departure from her more symbolically-rich visual storytelling, wherein she focuses instead on the form and motion of dancers and high-contrast black and white tones so deep and grainy that it resembles solarization or negative images that you'd see experimented with often in early film photography. Worth a look for experimental film enthusiasts or for Maya Deren fans, but I'd suggest At Land or Meshes of the Afternoon as a starting point.
Between the bookended imagery of artificial stars is, I suppose, an "Ensemble for Somnambulists," consisting of dancers pirouetting in and out of frame, the very active camera panning and tilting passed them. The camera flows and moves at erratic and canted angles at various points in a somewhat disorienting and kaleidoscopic fashion. Because the dancers are a white tone and the surroundings are a pure black, it appears as if they're flowing through a void, and this often obscures when the scenes are cut--with many scenes given the impression of being much longer takes. There's nothing very conceptual in this short. It's a minimalistic experiment. Nothing more, but for what it is, it's rather enchanting, with the freeform camerawork and the ghostly dancers, lending it an interesting atmosphere. Like most of her work that I'm familiar with, there's no sound.
This is a departure from her more symbolically-rich visual storytelling, wherein she focuses instead on the form and motion of dancers and high-contrast black and white tones so deep and grainy that it resembles solarization or negative images that you'd see experimented with often in early film photography. Worth a look for experimental film enthusiasts or for Maya Deren fans, but I'd suggest At Land or Meshes of the Afternoon as a starting point.
- CantileverCaribou
- Aug 11, 2020
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- Runtime6 minutes
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- Sound mix
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