Art Review: The Very Eye of the Night at Jancar Gallery

“The Very Eye of the Night,” a 1958 film by experimental filmmaker Maya Deren (1917-1961), opens with a long, slow pan of the night sky, accompanied by a spare arrangement of percussive notes in a haunting score by composer Teiji Ito. As a plaintive woodwind enters in, ghostly figures—dancers depicted in photographic negative—begin to drift across the stars. For the 15-minute duration of the film, camera and dancers alike move as if cut loose from gravity, tumbling through space at every angle like living depictions of constellations.

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