Tornar-se tempo: Maya Deren e Maura Lopes Cançado

Abstract

In a text on the possible relations between literature and film, “Para além da adaptação: formas alternativas de articulação entre literatura e cinema” (2003), Maria Esther Maciel discusses a cinema that goes beyond the dialogue with the 19th century’s common narrative forms, usually taking inspiration on the language of poetry. In this type of film, according to Maria Esther Maciel, the connections with literature would lie on implicit dialogues, references, “transcriations” (2003, p. 107), etc. From Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “cinema of poetry” concept to the poetic images created by filmmakers such as Alain Resnais, Peter Greenaway, Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch, Maciel’s essay explores a field of numerous possibilities regarding the interarts studies involving films. Taking these possibilities into consideration, we aim to develop, here, a comparative study on Maya Deren’s – an american filmmaker – and Maura Lopes Cançado’s – a brazilian writer – works, concerning how these literary and filmic texts relate to its production context and the way they incorporate the time dimension into the narratives. Our corpora includes Deren’s short films Meshes of the afternoon (1943), Witch’s cradle (1944, unfinished) and At land (1944), and Cançado’s short stories from her collection O sofredor do ver (1968). We aim to put in motion, alongside the literary and filmic works, concepts like dissolution of time (CASTELLO BRANCO, 1990), time-image (DELEUZE, 2005), ritualistic form (DEREN, 2005b), narrative link (CALVINO, 2002) and punctum (BARTHES, 2015).