Meshes of the Afternoon is a film from 1943 that was written, directed by and starring Maya Deren and her husband Alexandr Hammid. This film was a very influential film in the american experimental film industry.
The film has very dreamlike scenes as it repeats the same imagery over and over just changing slightly each time. Some objects show up time and time again such as the key, the knife and the flower and sometimes they turn into one of the other objects. What i like about the film is that the scenes are often recorded not showing the actual figure often only showing the shadow or the feet of the protagonist.
Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 http://366weirdmovies.com/119-meshes-of-the-afternoon-1943/
The feeling I get of the movie is that the woman has gone though some sort of trauma from her partner and commits suicide. I get this feeling as the dark mysterious figure who always leaves the protagonist turns into the man near the end. I get the feeling of suicide as in some of the scenes the protagonist is often looming over herself with the knife at hand. The key often turns into the knife and the knife often turns into the key, what I feel this symbolises is that the woman is feeling trapped and locked in and her only way out is death.
Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 http://www.studio-beat.com/art-news-blog/art-on-film-maya-deren/
Maeve Dawson Art 