The Roots

In high school I helped to make a film that was called "Lucidity." It was a largely incomprehensible symbolic and psychological film with lots of silence and bizarre dread. I didn't write it, but its influences seemed clear: Decades and decades of the tradition of student art film. Thanks to years and hordes of well-meaning but overly-ambitious students, there had evolved a distinct genre of pretentious short film. Anyway, a couple of months ago I finally got around to watching one of the landmarks of American avant-garde film. I was stunned. I think I can safely assume that the authors of our movie had never seen Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" but its influence had somehow trickled through the years of tradition and recrystallized in "Lucidity."

However, "Lucidity" was not a very good film. "Meshes of the Afternoon" is rad as hell and you can watch it below. Sadly (or maybe not), "Lucidity" was only burned to a small handful of DVDs, which I suspect were promptly lost, depriving you of the comparison. Sorry. I think.

Meshes of the Afternoon