[Maya Deren] insisted that the true magic of the photograph in motion is more than a reshuffling of raw material, more than a masquerade. And she, who could be energetic to the point of violence when she fought for her ideas, had the sensitive fingers and eyes of a surgeon, when it came to shaping her photographic visions without hurting the tissues of the physical surface.

What does she show us? What was she after? She was one of the artists and thinkers who speak of the great paradox of our time; who say that, although our civilization has come closest to penetrating the secrets of inorganic and organic matter, we are less familiar with the world of tangible things than any human tribe has ever been. And, thus, in Maya Deren's films, the familiar world captures us by its pervasive strangeness. The white hands press against a...