Maya. 1978–79. France. Directed by Teo Hernández. Super 8 mm transferred to 16 mm. Courtesy Mnam/Cci Centre Pompidou. 93 min.
A portrait of dancer Parvaneh Navaï, Maya was filmed in the forests of Meudon and Fontainebleau and on the Breton island of Ouessant across four seasons. Merging with trees and wind, rocks and waves, snow and fire, Navaï enters in communion with alchemical transmutation, tracing a shamanistic choreography to the rhythms of santur music. The different rhythmic variations of Teo Hernández’s participatory camera conjure, in this elegiac rite, the shifting appearances and phenomenal avatars of the Indian mystery of māyā, in connivance with the cosmovision of the filmmaker’s ancestors. “Each chord releases the eagle, the serpent, the angel, and the demon. Moving across the bed of appearances, following the trace of the torch, the skirt, the rose, the gaze shifts in the cup of joy. The sea, the laughter, the woman takes on the veil, the mask and the rock. Speed is a transparency that allows us to transcend the space of the illusory” (Teo Hernández).
This screening may include flashing and flickering images that can impact people who are sensitive to blinking lights.