Fabric in Film and Film as Fabric: Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon

Abstract

Maya Deren's films employ still and moving fabric in order to articulate the changing relationships among viewer, actor, and director. Deren's use of fiber-based material is an overlooked aspect of her cinematic work. In this essay I explore the parallel between the medium of film—the screen, as well as the representation of fabric on film—and fabric in several of Deren's films, primarily her well-known 1943 film Meshes of the Afternoon. This is a generative parallel because a comparison with fabric introduces the idea that film could be conceived of as, simultaneously, a tactile material and a legitimate art form to mid-century film audiences. Film's relation to the body is traditionally distanced: the audience sits far from the screen in order to view it; the actors’ bodies exist only as intangible arrangements of light and shadow. Reading film with an awareness of the characteristics and connotations of moving fabric recasts cinema in light of the screen's status as fabric, a potentially tactile medium.