Drama and myth frame the life and death of Maya Deren. Born in Kiev in 1917, at the start of the Russian Revolution, she died forty-four years later in New York City. In her brief life, she established herself as a pioneering experimental filmmaker, prolific writer, accomplished photographer, and crusader for a personal and poetic cinema. With its dreamy circular narrative and enigmatic imagery, her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), has inspired generations of artists, filmmakers, and poets.

Paris, 1976: the Centre Pompidou had not yet opened its doors, yet it was already asserting its ambition to include in its programming artistic practices that had until then remained invisible in museums. It is at this moment of prefiguration that the exhibition A History of Cinema is being organised. What kind of history is this? In the course of the sessions, an alternative narrative to the dominant cinematographic canons took shape, on the fringes of the industry and auteur cinema.

COUSIN Collective and Light Industry present the first critical anthology devoted to Indigenous experimental cinema. Temporal Territories brings together newly commissioned pieces alongside reprints of key writings on the subject, featuring theoretical interventions and artist portfolios, intergenerational dialogues and manifestos. With topics ranging from science fiction to found-footage filmmaking to the strange case of the DeMille Indians, the book surveys a varied and vital body of work, and suggests new forms still to come.