AD: PFF Doc. PFF@MCA
14.5 (Tuesday)
Aditional Programme: PFF doc.: / PFF@MCA
19:00 Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje (free screening)
IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN
[Im Spiegel der Maya Deren, 2002]
Martina Kudlácek, AT/CH/DE, 103’
“In the Mirror of Maya Deren” is a feature-length documentary that reconstructs the complex life, work, and artistic engagement of the so-called “mother of avant-garde and experimental film”—Maya Deren. Inspired by an announcement published within the Anthology Film Archives by Jonas Mekas to systematize Maya Deren’s deposited film materials, Martina Kudlacek decides to embark on a documentary investigation of the multifaceted film heritage of the innovative and influential American director of Ukrainian-Jewish descent.
The documentary writes different chapters of Deren’s life through conversations with her close acquaintances and collaborators, as well as prominent participants in the shaping of the post-war American art scene. Among others, the interviews feature: Jonas Mekas, “the godfather of American avant-garde cinema” and founder of the film archive “Anthology”; Alexander Hammid, a photographer and filmmaker from Czechoslovakia, Deren’s husband and her collaborator on Meshes of the Afternoon; dancer Rita Christiani, who plays Derren’s alter ego in Ritual in Transfigured Time; Chao-Li Chi, the protagonist in Meditation on Violence; as well as Katherine Dunham [Katherine Dunham], “the matriarch of the black dance”, alongside whom Deren will be introduced to the ritual practices of Haitian voodoo for the first time.
In addition to inserts from Maya Deren’s films, the documentary also includes archival materials from her lectures and workshops, as well as materials from long-term ethnographic research in Haiti, through which Kudlacek carefully approaches the context, film philosophy, and thoughtful aesthetic method of one of the pioneers of avant-garde film.
in collabioration with: 
Introduction by Ivana Mirchevska, MA
Ivana Mirchevska is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and cultural worker. Working through moving images, text, sound, and installation, she explores the intersection between visualization technologies and the spatial configuration of the gaze and the body. Mirchevska graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts with a degree in painting (2015) and received a Master’s degree from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Italy (2018/19). In 2023, she became an associate at WHW Akademija in Zagreb, Croatia.
Mirchevska is the author of several exhibitions, installations, and art projects. Her projects have been presented in various local and international contexts, including Late to the Party Showreel: Macedonian performance-on-video showreel, BANG BANG performance festival, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland (2022), Supernova Regeneration Festival, Denver, USA (2021), Dislocations, Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities (2021), Youth Biennale, Belgrade, Serbia (2021); Fuori Visioni Festival 6 | Tra muro e confine – Atto I e II, Piacenza, Italy (2020-2021); Biennial of young artists, MSU, Skopje (2021).
Mirchevska won the DENES Award for young visual artists (2022).