A female body in a wedding dress moves from top to bottom, sinking, attracted by a force of gravity. This woman sinks and then looks ahead. She is staring at us. This disturbing shot, taken from Ritual in Transfigured Time by Maya Deren, is in negative. It is an “image-refuge” that inhabits the narrator of the documentary. It becomes both a source of inspiration and obsession for archivist-turned-filmmaker Céline Ruivo, and the driving force behind a diary filmed on Super 8mm and video, in search of a feminine avant-garde. In this first part, which takes place in New York, the narrator focuses on three female filmmakers active from the late 1970s to the present day. Peggy Ahwesh, Jeanne Liotta and Su Friedrich made films with radically opposed styles. The connections between the three women emerge as they talk about their working methods and the tools they have used, as well as supporting or contributing to each other’s projects. This journey to New York also brings back ghostly stories of the Greenwich Village neighborhood, which was the crucible of an artistic avant-garde that has now disappeared, and where Maya Deren lived. The title Cinégraphies was borrowed from a French magazine dedicated to the avant-garde in the 1920s, a concept also used in the writings of French director Germaine Dulac, whose work is explored in the second part of the documentary (due in 2025).