Maya Deren (director and actor here);
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) ---dopplegangers figure heavily in this amazing, pioneering short film:
www.chess-theory.com/images_blog/encpbl3009_05_maya_deren.jpg
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPi9i3gfSAMOriginally a silent film (I think); the soundtrack was added years later, in the 1950s in NYC.
Maya DerenA pioneering avant-garde filmmaker, truly talented and innovative. And anti-Hollywood. Look what happened to her....
From wikipedia:
Criticism of Hollywood
Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Deren attacked Hollywood for its artistic, political and economic monopoly over American cinema. She stated, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,” and observed that Hollywood “has been a major obstacle to the definition and development of motion pictures as a creative fine-art form.” She set herself in opposition to the Hollywood film industry’s standards and practices.
[edit] Haiti and Vodoun
When Maya Deren decided to make an ethnographic film in Haiti, she was criticized for abandoning avantgarde film where she had carved her place, but she was ready to expand to a new level as an artist.[3] The Guggenheim grant enabled Deren to finance travel to Haiti in 1947 and to complete her film "Meditation on Violence". She went on three additional trips through 1954 to document and record the rituals of vodoun. A source of inspiration for ritual dance was Katherine Dunham who wrote her master’s thesis on Haitian dances in 1939, which Deren edited. Afterwards Deren wrote several articles on religious possession in dancing before her first trip to Haiti.[4] Deren not only filmed, recorded and photographed many hours of vodoun ritual, but also participated in the ceremonies. She documented her knowledge and experience of Vodoun in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (New York: Vanguard Press, 1953), edited by Joseph Campbell, which is considered a definitive source on the subject.
Deren filmed 18,000 feet of Vodoun rituals and people she met in Haiti. The footage was incorporated into a posthumous documentary film Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti edited and produced by Teiji Itō and his wife Cherel Winett Itō (1947-1999) in 1977.[5][6] All of the original wire recordings, photographs and notes are held in the Maya Deren Collection at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. The footage is housed at Anthology Film Archives, New York.
[edit] Death
Deren died in 1961, at the age of 44, from a brain hemorrhage brought on by extreme malnutrition. Her condition was also weakened by the amphetamines she had been taking since she began working for Dunham in 1941, prescribed by the notorious Dr. Max Jacobson. Deren was taking amphetamines and sleeping pills on a daily basis when she died. Her father suffered from high blood pressure, which she may have had as well.
Her ashes were scattered in Japan at Mount Fuji.
Beyond her death, she seemingly became part of James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover, an epic poem of revelations from the dead obtained by use of a ouija board.
[edit] Legacy
Deren was a key figure in the creation of a New American Cinema, highlighting personal, experimental, underground film. In 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award to honor independent filmmakers.
Works about Deren and her works have been produced in various media:
In 1994, the UK-based Horse and Bamboo Theatre created and toured Dance of White Darkness throughout Europe—the story of Deren's visits to Haiti.
In 2002, Martina Kudlacek directed a feature-length documentary about Deren, titled In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Im Spiegel der Maya Deren), which featured music by John Zorn.
Deren's films have also been shown with newly-written alternative soundtracks:
In 2004, the British rock group Subterraneans produced new soundtracks for six of Deren's short films as part of a commission from Queen's University Belfast's annual film festival. At Land won the festival prize for sound design.
In 2008, the Portuguese rock group Mão Morta produced new soundtracks for four of Deren's short films as part of a commission from Curtas Vila do Conde's annual film festival.
[edit] Filmography
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) with Alexander Hammid, music by Teiji Itō added 1952
At Land (1944) photographed by Hella Heyman and Alexander Hammid
A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) with Talley Beatty
Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) choreographic collaboration with Frank Westbrook and Rita Christiani, featuring Anaïs Nin and Gore Vidal
Meditation on Violence (1948) performance by Chao-Li Chi, Chinese flute and Haitian drums musical collage by Maya Deren with assistance by Teiji Itō.
The Very Eye of Night (1952–55) with Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Antony Tudor, music by Teiji Itō
Unfinished
The Witches' Cradle (1943) with Marcel Duchamp and Pajorita Matta
Medusa (1949) With Jean Erdman
Haitian Film Footage (1947–55) edited and assembled by Teiji and Cherel Itō as Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1981)
Season of Strangers (1959) also known as Haiku Film Project
Unreleased
Ensemble for Somnambulists (1951) Toronto Film Society workshop
Collaborations
The Private Life of a Cat (1947) co-directed by Alexander Hammid
[edit] See also
Women's Cinema
[edit] References
^ For the most authoritative source of biographical information on Maya Deren see: The Legend of Maya Deren, Volume 1, Part One; Part Two, by Catrina Neiman, VèVè Clark, Millicent Hudson, Francine Bailey, NY, 1976;1988.
^ "An Anagram of the Ideas of Filmmaker Maya Deren", Moira Sullivan 146-191,1997.
^ See: Maya Deren and the American Avantgarde edited by Bill Nichols, University of California Press, 2001. Maya Deren's Ethnographic Representation of Ritual and Magic in Haiti, Moira Sullivan, pages 207-229. According to Bill Nichols, "Taking up another neglected dimension of Maya Deren's work, Moira Sullivan's "Maya Deren's Ethnographic Representation of Ritual and Magic in Haiti" relies on primary source material in the Maya Deren Archive in Boston and Anthology Film Archives in New York." Maya Deren and the American Avantgarde edited by Bill Nichols, University of California Press, 2001, 18.
^ A list of these articles are found in : Sullivan, 1997, pp.199-218.
^ See Sullivan in Nichols, 2001, pages 207-229.
^ See also "Program notes" from screening at Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley
[edit] External links
Deren bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
Maya Deren - the DVD
Maya Deren at the Internet Movie Database
In the Mirror of Maya Deren at IMDB
Martina Kudláček (director of "In the Mirror of Maya Deren") by Robert Gardner BOMB 81/Fall 2002
Maya Deren Forum
The-Artists.org listing
Private Life of a Cat (1947) at the Internet Archive
Maya Deren Collection at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center
'Divine Horsemen' (book): excerpts
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren"
Categories: 1917 births | 1961 deaths | Experimental filmmakers | American experimental filmmakers | American film directors | American Vodou practitioners | Female film directors | Film theorists | Guggenheim Fellows | Jewish American film directors | Naturalized citizens of the United States | People from Kiev | People from Syracuse, New York | Ukrainian-American Jews | Ukrainian Jews | American women writers | Jewish women writers | Ukrainian women writers | Vodou | Ukrainian immigrants to the United States
