Film Matters Magazine

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Grant Brighter: This project examines an underdeveloped area of inquiry pertaining to the American avant-garde during the 1940s: the dynamic between the avant-garde and the commercial film industry as it relates to the mechanics of the human mind. Through formal analysis, I argue that Maya Deren’s Ritual in Transfigured Time exploits expectations instilled by commercial cinema to create anomalies in the audience’s perception of filmic time and space. This argument is derived from the schema theories of psychologists such as Frederic Bartlett, as well as Béla Balázs’s writings on“visual culture,” André Bazin’s notion of an evolving cinematic language, and Deren’s own writings on manipulating reality through the formal properties of film.

Close formal analysis of Ritual in Transfigured Time reveals the relationship between commercial cinema and individual perception. Through moments that seem to distort the spatial and temporal fabric of the film, Ritual suggests a viewer’s reliance on Hollywood-inspired schemata, in which motion indices are used to construct a cohesive fictional world from juxtaposed shots. For example, a sequence in the film cuts from a shot depicting a colonnade to a shot depicting an ocean shore.Due to the rightward movement of a woman in both shots, the viewer interprets this edit as one narrative moment despite the change in location (and the woman in the frame). Ritual highlights the ability of early American avant-garde cinema to reveal the social and psychological forces that influence how a film is understood, while also demonstrating how an individual’s perceptual reality is a subjective phenomenon produced by past experiences and cultural milieu.

Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, Serena Dykman’s grandmother, in Nana (Dyamant Pictures, 2016). Vimeo

“Never again,” the phrase associated with the Holocaust, is a reminder of the value of memory. The Holocaust memory is increasingly important in society today as survivors pass away and intolerance continues to exist. Many dedicated their postwar lives to preserving the Holocaust memory by sharing their stories with younger generations. One such individual was Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, an Auschwitz survivor and activist for tolerance. Maryla’s greatest wish was to prevent the Holocaust from ever being forgotten or repeated. Her granddaughter, Serena Dykman, carries on her grandmother’s legacy with her latest film Nana, a transgenerational documentary that tells her grandmother’s Auschwitz survival story and shares her stance against intolerance, racism, and antisemitism (Nana: A Film).

Serena Dykman’s documentary is not just a depiction of the life and work of an extraordinary woman, Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant; it is also a strong call to action. Maryla’s retelling of her experiences on screen is so “stunning in their transparency and absolutely heartbreaking to watch” (Propes) that viewers have become inspired and motivated to continue her fight against intolerance (Nana: A Film). As Serena traces her own journey of discovering her grandmother’s life story in Nana, she overcomes the challenges of making her call to action relevant to younger generations and continuing her grandmother’s work in the wake of political acts of violence such as the 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris (“Impact in Profile”). Nana won several well-deserved festival awards including the Madelyn’s Choice Award at the Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, the Best of Show Award at Chagrin Docs Without Borders Film Festival, and the Mira Nair Award for Rising Female Filmmaker at the Harlem International Film Festival, among many others. Its theatrical premiere occurred recently on April 13 in New York (Nana: A Film).

Because of my interest in social justice documentaries, I wanted to interview Serena Dykman about the making of Nana. After watching the film, I recently interviewed Serena via email. Her responses to the following questions continue to highlight the importance of the film and its message of tolerance.

Ashley Spillane: Tell us about your film, Nana.

Serena Dykman: I retrace my grandmother’s Auschwitz survival story, and investigate how her lifelong fight against intolerance can continue to be taught to the new generations, against the backdrop of current events.

Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, born in Poland, survived Ravensbruck, Malchow, and Auschwitz, where she was the forced translator of the “Angel of Death,” Dr. Mengele. She dedicated her postwar life to publicly speaking of her survival to the young generations, so that it would never be forgotten or repeated. Alice Michalowski and I, her daughter and granddaughter, explore how Maryla’s fight against intolerance can continue today, in a world where survivors are disappearing, and intolerance, racism and antisemitism are on the rise. Continue reading →

The monstrous mother in The Babadook (IFC Films, 2014)

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Elizabeth Riggs: This article is an examination of the monstrous mother, as portrayed in the films The Babadook and Lights Out. Specifically, it looks at how Kristeva’s theory of the abject can be applied to view the mothers in both films as abject due to their mental illness, and how the abject can create horror. Through contrasting each film’s outcome, it discusses the representation of single motherhood, as well as the problematic way that Lights Out depicts those with mental illness. Continue reading →