Swann and Barber’s revelation of the original patterning of film brings us
closer to another area of magic exploited in the best filmmaking. When the
artist Maya Deren returned from Haiti a newly qualified Voodoo Priestess,
she began to consider whether or not a ritualised visual representation and
patterned rhythm in the edit of a film could in fact produce a magic effect
or maybe even a magic totem. Cinema is often described as spellbinding and
Deren pushed this idea to its limit.
Deren, of course, famously acted out a particular ritualised form of cinema
but it is interesting to see how later artists have negotiated this
tradition. Look, for instance, at Tanya Syed’s Delilah. Here Syed edits and
re-edits a sequence suggesting postponement and fulfilment to build up a
narrative of found love. The repetition and rhythm of the film itself also
have the effect of conjuring up the climax as though the film is an act
which creates as well as narrates its own passage.
