At Land/Kristina Talking Pictures

A woman washes upon the shore in Maya Deren’s groundbreaking At Land, beginning an oneiric episode in which every cut holds the promise of some new, enigmatic discontinuity—characters suddenly appear and shapeshift, doppelgängers proliferate; doors open onto seaside cliffs, a dinner party becomes a thicket. Like Deren’s piece, Rainer’s Kristina Talking Pictures is, as the filmmaker puts it, “a narrative film inasmuch as it contains a series of events that can be synthesized into a story if one is disposed to do so.” In this case, the film revolves around a female lion tamer coming to America from Budapest. But through its design, Rainer continues, “of shifting correlations between word and image, persona and performer, enactment and illustration, explanation and ambiguity, KTP circles in a narrowing spiral toward its primary concerns: the uncertain relation of public act to personal fate, the ever-present possibility for disparity between public-directed conscience and private will.”