Maya Deren: Difference between revisions
Spelling of Alexander Hammid as used by him in Meshes of the Afternoon. Credit for Meshes of the Afternoon to Maya Deren, also acknowledged by Maya Deren. |
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Psychoanalysis of ''Meshes of the Afternoon'' from a Freudian viewer or Jungian viewer attempted to decode the symbolism in the film to uncover what Deren was saying about identity and sexuality. Deren adamantly objected her film undergoing analysis for it's symbolism because for Deren, the objects in the film were just that, objects "whose value and meaning ids defined and confirmed by their actual function in the context of the film as a whole". Deren wanted her audiences to appreciate the art for it's conscious value and spent a lot of her later career delivering lectures and writing essays on her film theory<ref>{{cite book|last1=Clark|first1=VeVe A.|last2=Hudson|first2=Millicent|last3=Neiman|first3=Catrina|editor1-last=Melton|editor1-first=Hollis|title=The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works|date=1988|publisher=Athology Film Archive/Film Culture|location=New York City|isbn=0-911689-17-6|edition=Volume 1 Part Two}}</ref>. |
Psychoanalysis of ''Meshes of the Afternoon'' from a Freudian viewer or Jungian viewer attempted to decode the symbolism in the film to uncover what Deren was saying about identity and sexuality. Deren adamantly objected her film undergoing analysis for it's symbolism because for Deren, the objects in the film were just that, objects "whose value and meaning ids defined and confirmed by their actual function in the context of the film as a whole". Deren wanted her audiences to appreciate the art for it's conscious value and spent a lot of her later career delivering lectures and writing essays on her film theory<ref>{{cite book|last1=Clark|first1=VeVe A.|last2=Hudson|first2=Millicent|last3=Neiman|first3=Catrina|editor1-last=Melton|editor1-first=Hollis|title=The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works|date=1988|publisher=Athology Film Archive/Film Culture|location=New York City|isbn=0-911689-17-6|edition=Volume 1 Part Two}}</ref>. |
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===== Alexander Hamid ===== |
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Alexander |
Alexander Hamid's role in the creation of ''Meshes of the Afternoon'' is as cameraperson. Maya Deren made extensive storyboards for all of her films including camera movements and camera effects. She wrote about these techniques in professional filmmaking magazines. The ideas and execution of the film are fully attributable to Deren. Hamid also acknowledged Deren as the sole creator of Meshes of the Afternoon.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Clark|first1=VeVe A.|last2=Hudson|first2=Millicent|last3=Neiman|first3=Catrina|editor1-last=Melton|editor1-first=Hollis|title=The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works|date=1988|publisher=Anthology Film Archive/Film Culture|location=New York City|isbn=0-911689-17-6|edition=Volume 1 Part Two}}</ref>. |
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===''At Land''=== |
===''At Land''=== |
Revision as of 20:29, 10 May 2018
Maya Deren | |
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Born | Eleanora Derenkowskaia April 29, 1917 |
Died | October 13, 1961 New York, New York, United States | (aged 44)
Nationality | American |
Education | New York University, New School of Social Research, Smith College |
Known for | Choreography, Film, Dancing, Ethnography, Ethnomusicology |
Notable work | Films: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), At Land (1944), A Study for Choreography for Camera (1945), Ritual in Transfigured Time (1945-1946), Meditation on Violence (1947), The Very Eye of Night (1959) Books: Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1953) An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film (1946) |
Spouse(s) | Gregory Bardacke (1935–1939) Alexandr Hackenschmied (1942–1947) Teiji Ito (1960–1961; her death) |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Work in Motion Pictures, (1947) Grand Prix Internationale for Amateur Film, Cannes Film Festival (1947) |
Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleonora Derenkowska (Ukrainian: Елеоно́ра Деренко́вська), was a Ukrainian-born American filmmaker and one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.
The function of film, Deren believed, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, rendering her oeuvre dynamic and always-evolving.[1] She combined her interests in dance, Haitian Vodou and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black-and-white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion, and other camera techniques to her fullest advantage, Deren created continued motion through discontinued space, while abandoning the established notions of physical space and time, with the ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness.
One of the most influential experimental films in American cinema was Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), her collaboration with Alexander Hammid. She went on to make several films of her own, including At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman, her camerawoman.
Early life
Deren was born in Kiev, Ukraine, into a Jewish family, to psychologist Solomon Derenkowsky and Marie Fiedler, who supposedly named her after Italian actress Eleonora Duse.
In 1922, the family fled the USSR because of anti-Semitic pogroms and moved to Syracuse, New York. Her father shortened the family name to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York.[2] He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse.
In 1928, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Her mother moved to Paris, France to be with her daughter while she attended the League of Nations International School of Geneva in Switzerland from 1930 to 1933.
Deren began college at Syracuse University, where she studied journalism[3] and political science, and also became a highly active socialist leader during the Trotskyist movement.[4] Deren serves as National Secretary in the National Student office of the Young People's Socialist League and was a member of the Social Problems Club at Syracuse University through which she met Gregory Bardacke, whom she married at the age of eighteen in June 1935[4]. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City. She finished school at New York University with a bachelor's degree in literature in June 1936 then returned to Syracuse in the Fall. She and her husband became active in various socialist causes in New York City. She graduated from New York University with a bachelor's degree in literature[2] and separated from Bardacke. The divorce was finalized in 1939. She attended the New School for Social Research and received a master's degree in English literature at Smith College. Her master's thesis was titled The Influence of the French Symbolist School on Anglo-American Poetry (1939).
Early career
After graduation from Smith, Deren returned to New York’s Greenwich Village, where she joined the European émigré art scene. The following years from 1937-1939 were very formative of career as Deren supported herself by free-lance writing a for radio shows and foreign language newspapers. During that time she also worked as an editorial assistant to famous American writers, Eda Lou Walton, Max Eastman, and then William Seabrook[4]. She became known for her European-style handmade clothes, wild, curly hair, and fierce convictions.[2] In 1940, Deren moved to Los Angeles to focus on her poetry and free-lance photography. In 1941, Deren wrote and suggested a children's book on dance to African American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist of Caribbean culture and dance Katherine Dunham and later became her assistant and publicist. Dunham's fieldwork influenced Deren's studies of Haitian culture and Voudoun mythology.[5] At the end of touring a new musical Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham dance company stopped in Los Angeles for several months to work in Hollywood. It was there that Deren met Alexandr Hackenschmied (later Hammid), a celebrated Czech-born photographer and cameraman who would become her second husband in 1942. Hackenschmied had fled from Czechoslovakia in 1938 after Hitler's advance. They lived together in Laurel Canyon where he helped her with her still photography which focused on local fruit pickers in Los Angeles.[4]
Cinema
Meshes of the Afternoon
In 1943, Deren purchased a used 16 mm Bolex camera with some of the inheritance money after her father's death from a heart attack. This camera captured her first and best-known film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), made in their Los Angeles home on a burdget of $250[6],in collaboration with Hammid. Meshes of the Afternoon is recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film. It is the first example of a narrative work in avant-garde American film; critics have seen autobiographical elements in the film, as well as thoughts about women and the individual. Originally a silent film with no dialogue, music for the film was composed by Deren's third husband Teiji Itō in 1952. The film can be described as an expressionistic "trance film," full of dramatic angles and innovative editing. It seems to investigate the ephemeral ways in which the protagonist's unconscious mind works and makes connections between objects and situations. A woman, played by Maya Deren, walks to her friend's house in Los Angeles, falls asleep and has a dream. The sequence of walking up to the gate on the partially shaded road restarts numerous times, resisting conventional narrative expectations, and ends in various situations inside the house. Movement from the wind, shadows and the music sustain the heartbeat of the dream. Certain symbols recur on the screen, including a cloaked, mirror-faced figure, and a key, which becomes twinned with a knife.
The loose repetition and rhythm cut short any expectation of a conventional narrative, heightening the dream-like qualities. The camera initially avoids her face, which precludes identification with a particular woman. Multiple selves appear, shifting between the first and third person, suggesting that the super-ego is at play, which is in line with the psychoanalytic Freudian staircase and flower motifs. This kind of Freudian interpretation, which she disagreed with, led Deren to add sound to the film composed by Teji Ito. Another interpretation is that each film is an example of a “personal film". Her first piece explores a woman's subjectivity and her relation to the external world. Georges Sadoul said Deren may have been "the most important figure in the post-war development of the personal, independent film in the U.S.A."[7] In featuring the filmmaker as the woman whose subjectivity in the domestic space is explored, the feminist dictum "the personal is political" is foregrounded. As with her other films on self-representation, Deren navigates conflicting tendencies of the self and the "other," through doubling, multiplication and merging of the woman in the film. Following a dreamlike quest with allegorical complexity, Meshes of the Afternoon has an enigmatic structure and a loose affinity with both film noir and domestic melodrama.[2] The film is famous for how it resonated with Deren's own life and anxieties. According to a review in The Moving Image, " this film emerges from a set of concerns and passionate commitments that are native to Deren's life and her trajectory. The first of these trajectories is Deren's interest in socialism during her youth and university years".[8]
Director's Notes
There is no concrete information about the conception of Meshes of the Afternoon, just that Deren offered the poetic ideas and Hammid was able to turn them into visuals. Deren's initial concept began on the terms of a subjective camera, one that would show the point of view of herself without the aid of mirrors and would move as her eyes through spaces. According to the earliest program note, she describes Meshes of the Afternoon as:
This film is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does not record an event which could be witnessed by other persons. Rather, it reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret, and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience.
Influences
Jean Cocteau
Meshes of the Afternoon resembles a French film called Blood of a Poet (1930) by Jean Cocteau. The film is a representation of the subjective point of view of the Cocteau's mind in which he grapples with the concepts of inner and outer reality. Meshes of the Afternoon and Cocteau's film share the same imagery in many instances, however, Deren repeatedly claimed to have never seen the film and denied any influence by Cocteau. After seeing Blood of a Poet for the first time, she actually became fond of Cocteau[9].
In the fall of 1945, Deren wrote to Victor Animatograph Corp. that she had seen the film multiple times now and expressed interest in publishing a commentary on it. The article was never written[10].
Dali and Buñuel
The surrealist background of Dali and Bunuel is a question of influence because of the surreal nature of Meshes of the Afternoon. Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou (1928) is on the premier examples of film representing the structure of the subconscious[11].
Deren detested this comparison because of the surrealist movement's interest in the entertainment value of it's subject more than its meaning. The form of Meshes of the Afternoon does not compare to Un Chien Andalou either[12].
Freud and Jung
Psychoanalysis of Meshes of the Afternoon from a Freudian viewer or Jungian viewer attempted to decode the symbolism in the film to uncover what Deren was saying about identity and sexuality. Deren adamantly objected her film undergoing analysis for it's symbolism because for Deren, the objects in the film were just that, objects "whose value and meaning ids defined and confirmed by their actual function in the context of the film as a whole". Deren wanted her audiences to appreciate the art for it's conscious value and spent a lot of her later career delivering lectures and writing essays on her film theory[13].
Alexander Hamid
Alexander Hamid's role in the creation of Meshes of the Afternoon is as cameraperson. Maya Deren made extensive storyboards for all of her films including camera movements and camera effects. She wrote about these techniques in professional filmmaking magazines. The ideas and execution of the film are fully attributable to Deren. Hamid also acknowledged Deren as the sole creator of Meshes of the Afternoon.[14].
At Land
Deren filmed At Land in Port Jefferson and Amagansett, New York in the summer of 1944. Taking on more of an environmental psychologist's perspective, Deren "externalizes the hidden dynamic of the external world...as if I had moved from a concern with the life of the fish, to a concern with the sea which accounts for the character of the fish and its life."[7] Maya Deren washes up on the shore of the beach, and climbs up a piece of driftwood that leads to a room lit by chandeliers, and one long table filled with men and women smoking. She seems to be invisible to the people as she crawls across the table, uninhibited; her body continues seamlessly again onto a new frame, crawling through foliage; following the flowing pattern of water on rocks; following a man across a farm, to a sick man in bed, through a series of doors, and finally popping up outside on a cliff. She shrinks in the wide frame as she walks farther away from the camera, up and down sand dunes, then frantically collecting rocks back on the shore. Her expression seems confused when she sees two women playing chess in the sand. She runs back through the entire sequence, and because of the jump-cuts, it seems as though she is a double or "doppelganger," where her earlier self sees her other self running through the scene. Some of her movements are controlled, suggesting a theatrical, dancer-like quality, while some have an almost animalistic sensibility as she crawls through the seemingly foreign environments. This is one of Deren's films in which the focus is on the character's exploration of her own subjectivity in her physical environment, inside as well as outside her subconscious, although it has a similar amorphous quality compared to her other films.
A Study in Choreography for Camera
In the spring of 1945 she made A Study in Choreography for Camera, which Deren said was "an effort to isolate and celebrate the principle of the power of movement."[7] The compositions and varying speeds of movement within the frame inform and interact with Deren's meticulous edits and varying film speeds and motions to create a dance that Deren said could only exist on film. Excited by the way the dynamic of movement is greater than anything else within the film, Maya established a completely new sense of the word "geography" as the movement of the dancer transcends and manipulates the ideas of both time and space.[7] Running at just under 3 minutes long, A Study in Choreography for Camera is a fragment but also a carefully constructed exploration of a man who dances in a forest, and then seems to teleport to the inside of a house because of how continuous his movements are from one place to the next. The choreography is perfectly synched as he seamlessly appears in an outdoor courtyard and then returns to an open, natural space. It shows a progression from nature to the confines of society, and back to nature. The figure belongs to dancer and choreographer Talley Beatty, whose last movement is a leap across the screen back to the natural world. The edit its broken, choppy, showing different angles and compositions, and even with parts in slow-motion, Deren is able to keep the quality of the leap smooth and seemingly uninterrupted.
Ritual in Transfigured Time
By her fourth film, Deren discussed in An Anagram that she felt special attention should be given to unique possibilities of time and that the form should be ritualistic as a whole. Ritual in Transfigured Time began in August and was completed in 1946. It explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual, looking at the details as well as the bigger ideas of the nature and process of change. The main roles were played by Deren and the dancers Rita Christiani and Frank Westbrook.[15]
Meditation on Violence
Deren's Meditation on Violence was made in 1948. Chao-Li Chi's performance obscures the distinction between violence and beauty. It was an attempt to "abstract the principle of ongoing metamorphosis," found in Ritual in Transfigured Time, though Deren felt it was not as successful in the clarity of that idea, brought down by its philosophical weight.[7] Halfway through the film, the sequence is rewound, producing a film loop.
Film career
Deren defined cinema as an art, provided an intellectual context for film viewing, and filled a theoretical gap for the kinds of independent films societies were featuring.[16]
Her entrepreneurial spirit became evident as she began to screen and distribute her films in the United States, Canada, and Cuba, lecturing and writing on avant-garde film theory, and Vodoun as well. In February 1946 she booked the Village's Provincetown Playhouse for a major public exhibition, titled Three Abandoned Films, in which she showed Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land, and A Study in Choreography for the Camera. The event was completely sold out, inspiring Amos Vogel's formation of Cinema 16, the most successful film society of the 1950s.
In 1946, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for "Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures," and won the Grand Prix Internationale for 16mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival for Meshes of the Afternoon. She then created a scholarship for experimental filmmakers, the Creative Film Foundation.[17]
In 1958, Deren collaborated with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Antony Tudor to create The Very Eye of Night.
Deren was a muse and inspiration to such up-and-coming avant-garde filmmakers as Curtis Harrington, Stan Brakhage, and Kenneth Anger, who emulated her independent, entrepreneurial spirit. Her influence can also be seen in films by Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer, and Su Friedrich.[5]
Personal life
In 1943, she moved to a bungalow on Kings Road in Hollywood[4] and adopted the name Maya, a pet name her husband Hammid coined. Maya is the name of the mother of the historical Buddha as well as the dharmic concept of the illusory nature of reality. In Greek myth, Maia is the mother of Hermes and a goddess of mountains and fields.
In 1944, back in New York City, her social circle included Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, John Cage, and Anaïs Nin. In 1944, Deren filmed The Witch's Cradle in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery with Duchamp featured in the film, and possibly assisting her in the direction of the film.[citation needed]
Many friends described her look as that of an exotic Russian Jew,[citation needed] contributing a part of her attractiveness to her bohemian, Greenwich Village lifestyle. In the December 1946 issue of Esquire magazine, a caption for her photograph teased that she "experiments with motion pictures of the subconscious, but here is finite evidence that the lady herself is infinitely photogenic."[18] Her third husband, Teiji Ito said "Maya was always a Russian. In Haiti she was a Russian. She was always dressed up, talking, speaking many languages and being a Russian."[18]
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.[19] Deren talks about the freedoms of independent cinema:
Artistic freedom means that the amateur filmmaker is never forced to sacrifice visual drama and beauty to a stream of words...to the relentless activity and explanations of a plot...nor is the amateur production expected to return profit on a huge investment by holding the attention of a massive and motley audience for 90 minutes...Instead of trying to invent a plot that moves, use the movement of wind, or water, children, people, elevators, balls, etc. as a poem might celebrate these. And use your freedom to experiment with visual ideas; your mistakes will not get you fired.[20]
Haiti and Vodou
When Maya Deren decided to make an ethnographic film in Haiti, she was criticized for abandoning avant-garde film where she had made her name, but she was ready to expand to a new level as an artist.[21][22] She had studied ethnographic footage by Gregory Bateson in Bali in 1947, and was interested in including it in her next film.[4] In September she divorced Hammid and left for a nine-month stay in Haiti. The Guggenheim Fellowship grant in 1947 enabled Deren to finance her travel and complete her film Meditation on Violence. She went on three additional trips through 1954 to document and record the rituals of Haitian Vodou.
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.[23] Deren not only filmed, recorded and photographed many hours of Vodou ritual, but also participated in the ceremonies. She documented her knowledge and experience of Vodou 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. She described her attraction to Vodou possession ceremonies, transformation, dance, play, games and especially ritual came from her strong feeling on the need to decenter our thoughts of self, ego and personality.[2] In her book An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film she wrote:
"The ritualistic form treats the human being not as the source of the dramatic action, but as a somewhat depersonalized element in a dramatic whole. The intent of such depersonalization is not the deconstruction of the individual; on the contrary, it enlarges him beyond the personal dimension and frees him from the specializations and confines of personality. He becomes part of a dynamic whole which, like all such creative relationships, in turn, endow its parts with a measure of its larger meaning."[1]
Deren filmed 18,000 feet of Vodou 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 in 1977 (with funding from Deren's friend James Merrill) by Teiji Itō (1935-1982) and his wife Cherel Winett Itō (1947–1999).[24][25][26] All of the original wire recordings, photographs and notes are held in the Maya Deren Collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. The film footage is housed at Anthology Film Archives in New York City.
An LP of some of Deren's wire recordings was published by the newly formed Elektra Records in 1953 entitled Voices of Haiti. The cover art for the album was by Teiji Ito.[27]
Anthropologists Melville Herkovitz and Harold Courlander acknowledged the importance of Divine Horsemen, and in contemporary studies it is often cited as an authoritative voice, where Deren's methodology has been especially praised because "Vodou has resisted all orthodoxies, never mistaking surface representations for inner realities." [28]
In her book of the same name,[29] Deren uses the spelling,'Voudoun,' explaining: "Voudoun terminology, titles and ceremonies still make use of the original African words and in this book they have been spelled out according to usual English phonetics and so as to render, as closely as possible, the Haitian pronunciation. Most of the songs, sayings and even some of the religious terms, however, are in Creole, which is primarily French in derivation (although it also contains African, Spanish and Indian words). Where the Creole word retains its French meaning, it has been written out so as to indicate both the original French word and the distinctive Creole pronunciation." In her Glossary of Creole Words, Deren includes 'Voudoun' while the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary[30] draws attention to the similar French word, Vaudoux.
Death
Deren died in 1961, at the age of 44, from a brain hemorrhage brought on by extreme malnutrition. Her condition may have also been weakened by her long term dependence on amphetamines and sleeping pills prescribed by Dr. Max Jacobson, an arts scene doctor notorious for his liberal prescription of drugs,[2] who later became famous as one of President Kennedy's physicians. Her father suffered from hypertension, which she may also have had.
Her ashes were scattered in Japan at Mount Fuji.
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.
The Legend of Maya Deren, Vol. 1 Part 2 consists of hundreds of documents, interviews, oral histories, letters, and autobiographical memoirs.[2]
Works about Deren and her works have been produced in various media:
- In 1987, Jo Ann Kaplan directed a biographical documentary about Deren, titled Invocation: Maya Deren (65 min)
- 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.
Filmography
Year | Title | Format | Length | Cast | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1943 | Meshes of the Afternoon | 16 mm | 14 minutes | Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid | Co-directed with Alexander Hammid; B&W; music by Teiji Itō added in 1959[31][32] |
1943 | The Witch's Cradle | 16 mm | 13 minutes | Marcel Duchamp, Pajorita Matta | B&W; unfinished[31] |
1944 | At Land | 16 mm | 15 minutes | John Cage, Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid | B&W[31] |
1945 | A Study in Choreography for Camera | 16 mm | 3 minutes | Talley Beatty | B&W[31] |
1946 | Ritual in Transfigured Time | 16 mm | 14 minutes | Rita Christiani, Maya Deren | B&W; silent[31] |
1947 | The Private Life of a Cat | 16 mm | 29 minutes | Collaboration with Alexander Hammid[32] | |
1948 | Meditation on Violence | 16 mm | 13 minutes | Chao-Li Chi | music by Teiji Itō[31] |
1949 | Medusa | 16 mm | 10 minutes | Jean Erdman | unfinished[32] |
1951 | Ensemble for Somnambulists | 16 mm | 7 minutes | Toronto Film Society workshop; unreleased[32] | |
1958 | The Very Eye of Night | 16 mm | 15 minutes | Antony Tudor (choreographer) | In collaboration with Metropolitan Opera Ballet School;[32] assistant director: Harrison Starr III; music by Teiji Itō[31] |
1959 | Season of Strangers | 16 mm | 58 minutes | Also known as Haiku Film Project; unfinished[32] | |
1985 | Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti | 16 mm | 52 minutes | John Genke (voice), Joan Pape (voice) | Original footage shot by Deren (1947–1954); reconstruction by Teiji and Cherel Itō[31] |
Discography
Vinyl LPs
Year | Artist | Title | Label | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
1953 | Maya Deren | Voices of Haiti | Elektra Records | Design [cover]: Teiji Ito; recorded during ceremonials near Croix-des-Missions and Pétion-Ville, Haiti[33] |
1978 | Unknown | Meringues and Folk Ballads of Haiti | Lyrichord Discs | Recorded by Maya Deren[34] |
1980 | Unknown | Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti | Lyrichord Discs | Recorded by Maya Deren; design [cover]: Teiji Ito; liner notes: Cherel Ito[35] |
Written works
Deren was also an important film theorist.
- Her most widely read essay on film theory is probably An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, Deren's seminal treatise that laid the groundwork for many of her ideas on film as an art form (Yonkers, NY: Alicat Book Shop Press, 1946).
- Her collected essays were published[36] in 2005 and arranged in three sections:
- Film Poetics, including: Amateur versus Professional, Cinema as an Art Form, An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality
- Film Production, including: Creating Movies with a New Dimension: Time, Creative Cutting, Planning by Eye, Adventures in Creative Film-Making
- Film in Medias Res, including: A Letter, Magic is New, New Directions in Film Art, Choreography for the Camera, Ritual in Transfigured Time, Meditation on Violence, The Very Eye of Night.
- Divine Horsemen: Living Gods of Haiti was published in 1953 by Vanguard Press (New York City) and Thames & Hudson (London), republished under the title of The Voodoo Gods by Paladin in 1975, and again under its original title by McPherson & Company in 1998.
See also
References
- ^ a b Deren, Maya (1946). An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film. The Alicat Bookshop Press.
- ^ a b c d e f g Nichols, Bill, ed. (2001). Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde: Includes the complete text of An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 3–10, 268.
- ^ "Maya Deren". Answers.com. Archived from the original on May 4, 2014. Retrieved August 28, 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f Clark, VèVè; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1985). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: a documentary biography and collected works. Vol. 1, pt. 1, Signatures (1917-42). New York: Anthology Film Archives/Film Culture. ISBN 978-0-91168-914-3.
- ^ a b Berger, Sally (2010). Butler, Connie (ed.). Maya Deren's Legacy. New York: Museum of Modern Art. p. 301.
{{cite book}}
:|journal=
ignored (help) - ^ Clark, VeVe A.; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1988). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works (Volume 1 Part Two ed.). New York City: Athology Film Archive/Film Culture. ISBN 0-911689-17-6.
- ^ a b c d e Kay, Karyn; Peary, Gerald, eds. (1977). "A Letter to James Card by Maya Deren". Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology. New York: Dutton. ISBN 978-0-52547-459-3.
- ^ Gadassik, Alla (July 11, 2012). "Meshes of the Afternoon (review)". The Moving Image. 12 (1): 139–142. doi:10.1353/mov.2012.0015. ISSN 1542-4235.
- ^ Clark, VeVe A.; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1988). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works (Volume 1 Part Two ed.). New York City: Athology Film Archive/Film Culture. ISBN 0-911689-17-6.
- ^ Clark, VeVe A.; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1988). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works (Volume 1 Part Two ed.). New York City: Athology Film Archive/Film Culture. ISBN 0-911689-17-6.
- ^ Clark, VeVe A.; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1988). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works (Volume 1 Part Two ed.). New York City: Athology Film Archive/Film Culture. ISBN 0-911689-17-6.
- ^ Clark, VeVe A.; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1988). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works (Volume 1 Part Two ed.). New York City: Athology Film Archive/Film Culture. ISBN 0-911689-17-6.
- ^ Clark, VeVe A.; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1988). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works (Volume 1 Part Two ed.). New York City: Athology Film Archive/Film Culture. ISBN 0-911689-17-6.
- ^ Clark, VeVe A.; Hudson, Millicent; Neiman, Catrina (1988). Melton, Hollis (ed.). The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works (Volume 1 Part Two ed.). New York City: Anthology Film Archive/Film Culture. ISBN 0-911689-17-6.
- ^ Nichols, Bill, ed. (2009). Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde. University of California Press. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-52022-732-3. Retrieved September 18, 2017.
- ^ Rabinowitz, Lauren (1991). "Maya Deren and an American Avant-garde Cinema". Points of Resistance: Women, Power & Politics in the New York Avant-garde Cinema, 1934-1971. Urbana: Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 49–91.
- ^ "Maya Deren | biography - American director and actress". Britannica.com. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
- ^ a b Pramaggiore, Maria (Winter 1997). "Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren". Cinema Journal. 36 (2). University of Texas Press: 17–40.
- ^ Timeline at 2010 MoMA exhibit.
- ^ Deren, Maya (1965). "Amateur Versus Professional". Film Culture (39): 45–46.
- ^ Sullivan, Moira (2001). "Maya Deren's Ethnographic Representation of Ritual and Magic in Haiti". In Nichols, Bill (ed.). Maya Deren and the American Avantgarde. University of California Press. pp. 207–229. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
- ^ Nichols (2001), page 18. According to 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."
- ^ A list of these articles are found in : Sullivan, 1997, pp.199-218.
- ^ Sullivan in Nichols (2001), pp.207-229.
- ^ "Program notes" from screening at Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley.
- ^ Paganopoulos, M. (2011). "The Archetype of Transformation in Maya Deren's Film Rituals". In Hauke, Christopher; Hockley, Luke (eds.). Jung and Film II. Routledge. pp. 253–265.
- ^ "Master Discography". Elektra Records.
- ^ Cosentino, ed., Sacred Arts of Vodou, p.xii. Cited by Sullivan in Nichols (2001), p.225.
- ^ Deren, M. (1975). The Voodoo Gods. Paladin. pp. 26 & 305. (A reprint of Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti.)
- ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). 1973. See also: Haitian Vodou.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Haslem, Wendy (December 12, 2002). "Great Directors: Maya Deren". Senses of Cinema (23). Retrieved June 19, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f "In the Mirror of Maya Deren" (PDF). Zeitgeist Films. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 6, 2013. Retrieved June 19, 2011.
{{cite web}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ "Maya Deren – Voices Of Haiti". Discogs. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
- ^ "Meringues And Folk Ballads Of Haiti". Discogs. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
- ^ "Divine Horsemen - The Voodoo Gods Of Haiti". Discogs.com. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
- ^ "Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film". McPherson & Co. 2005. ISBN 0-929701-65-8. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
External links
- Deren bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
- Maya Deren at IMDb
- 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
- 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
- Article on Maya Deren: seven films that guarantee her legend
- Maya Deren biography from Jewish Women's Archive
- Journal from MIT Seeing the Invisible: Maya Deren’s Experiments in Cinematic Trance
- Maya Deren Biography from Project MUSE
- Article from USC Cinematic Arts
- 1917 births
- 1961 deaths
- 20th-century American actresses
- 20th-century American women artists
- 20th-century American women writers
- American dancers
- American experimental filmmakers
- American female dancers
- American film actresses
- American film directors
- American Voodoo practicioners
- American women experimental filmmakers
- American women film directors
- American women writers
- Female dancers
- Film theorists
- Guggenheim Fellows
- Haitian Vodou
- Imperial Russian emigrants to the United States
- Jewish American actresses
- Jewish women writers
- People from Kiev
- People from Syracuse, New York
- Soviet emigrants to the United States
- White Russian emigrants to the United States
- Women animators