Premiere

Music on Tap, The Record Room, Catherine Street, Limerick, 20 February 2025.

Live soundtrack performed on 1010 Blackbox, Monome Norns, Korg NTS-3 Kaoss Pad, and Music Thing 8mu.

Description

“The Witch’s Cradle” (Maya Deren, 1943 / Robin Parmar, 2025) black and white, stereo sound, duration 7:49

Following her legendary debut “Meshes of the Afternoon” (shot by Alexander Hammid) Deren embarked upon her first project as cinematographer. Created with limited means and without the technical support of her partner, this film was soon abandoned, with only fragments preserved. My goal with this project was to reaffirm Deren’s status by reinstating in this film her characteristic concerns: dream logic, vertical montage, choreographic use of space, and feminist principles. Though this version was implemented in the digital realm, the methods were largely constrained to those techniques of optical film editing and musique concrète composition that were available in the 1940s. The resulting recomposition of “The Witch’s Cradle” affirms experimental fiction film as a space for creative discovery… and failure.