BritFest Films : <i> Following are capsule reviews of screenings in the American Film Institute’s BritFest during the UK/LA ’88 Festival. All screenings are in the Mark Goodson Theater on the AFI campus in Hollywood. : </i>
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‘INVOCATION: MAYA DEREN’/’SEEING FOR OURSELVES’ Goodson, 6:30 p . m.
Two-part program with a feminist slant. Best is JoAnn Kaplan’s sympathetic documentary on American avant-garde film maker Maya Deren--whose darkly sexual Bohemian image and bizarre blend of interests (dance, radical politics and voodoo) made her a figure ahead of her time. Deren is recalled here, emotionally, by friends, colleagues and lovers; even in her early films--pastiches of Cocteau and Bunuel--she seems to have been typecast for the ‘60’s: a decade she barely lived to appreciate. Margaret Williams’ “Seeing for Ourselves” has a dryer “preaching-to-the-converted” feel. It’s a portrait of a British women’s film-making group in which theoretical arguments and personal manifestoes are delivered in cautiously precise, self-convinced monotones--like academics vivisecting poetry.
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