Superchunk’s Mac Scores Deren Films

To premiere them live in September.

By Blurt Staff

Mac McCaughan (Superchunk, Portastatic) has composed original scores for four films by noted experimental filmmaker Maya Deren, and he will perform them live on Thursday, September 29, at the world premiere of Transfigured Time: Music for the Films of Maya Deren, which opens the Westobou Festival in Augusta, Georgia. The premiere will begin at sunset at the Sacred Heart Cultural Center with McCaughan leading a small ensemble.

McCaughan, of course, has worked on film scores in the past, including for for Who Loves the Sun and Looking for Leonard. His live scores for silent films include the Seattle International Film Festival's presentation of Tod Browning's The Unknown and Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness with Superchunk at the San Francisco Film Festival.

Maya Deren (1917-1961) is often referred to as "the mother of the American underground cinema." Her films are known for their startling and surrealistic imagery in which time and space are altered to create a world somewhere between dreams and reality. In 1946, Ms. Deren became the first filmmaker to receive a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and later that year she was the recipient of the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix Internationale. From photographer Cindy Sherman to artist Matthew Barney to filmmaker David Lynch, Maya Deren's profound influence as a filmmaker and theorist resonates to this very day.