Short 16-millimeter films by the great experimental dancer-performer-filmmaker-theorist Maya Deren, perhaps the first major figure in the American avant-garde cinema: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), codirected by Alexander Hammid; At Land (1944), possibly her greatest film; A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945); Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946); her unjustly neglected Meditation of Violence (1948); and The Very Eye of Night (1959). 86 min. (JR)