Ritual In Transfigured Time (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #9 extract: Ritual In Transfigured Time (1946)

Ritual In Transfigured Time is an abstract short narrative film by Maya Deren that follows a dancer in three separate spaces; a room where she winds yarn, a party where everybody breezes past one another and a garden of sorts where she is pursued by a male dancer. Throughout these three spaces, we move through fluid shifts between normal motion and slow motion (that is simply stunning) as an extroverted and an introverted figure follows our protagonist. 

This loose narrative then seem to be focused on both the roles our protagonist has to play in society as well as her perception of such processes in respect to time. And through this character study of sorts, the overriding idea that bleeds from the screen is a yearning for abstraction and an escape from societal rituals in space and time. 

It is then through highly experimental form and content that Deren dexterously puts to screen sensations of entrapment and freedom, leaving this film a mightily impressive one.