Maya Deren
Birth:
April 29, 1917 (Kiev, Ukraine, Russia)
Death:
Oct. 13, 1961
Official Website:
None
Major Works:
The Witch’s Cradle (unfinished) (with Marcel Duchamp)
The Very Eye of Night (1959)
Mediation on Violence (1948)
Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)
A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)
At Land (1944)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) (with Alexander Hammid)
Notes:
Real name: Eleanora Derenkowsky.
Was also an accomplished choreographer and much of her film work is influenced by her dance performance background.
Later in her career, she became interested in Haitian voodoo and worked on a documentary about the subject that was never completed.
Won the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix Internationale in 1947.
Died of a brain hemorrhage.
Most of her films are available on a DVD from Mystic Fire Video.
In the Mirror of Maya Deren was a well-received documentary about her life and filmmaking.
Online Resources:
IMDB: Profile
Senses of Cinema: Profile
Film Books About Maya Deren:
An Introduction to the American Underground Film by Sheldon Renan (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1967) (Published simultaneously in Canada by Clarke, Irwin and Company, Limited, Toronto and Vancouver) (Indexed on p. 301.)
Video: None
[...] to each filmmaker’s record over there. And in case somebody doesn’t know who the “Maya Deren” the award is named after is (gasp!), just click her name there for her own UFG [...]
[...] filmmaker on the list is Marie Menken. A bit strangely, I think, is that Renan didn’t include Maya Deren nor Shirley Clarke. Yes, Deren had been dead for many years, but Ron Rice had also passed away and [...]
[...] does appear to reference the legendary 1943 underground dream film Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid in Mulholland [...]
[...] film, Window Water Baby Moving, caused a bit of a scandal at the time. Fellow underground filmmaker Maya Deren called the film “a blasphemy” because it recorded something a man should never see. But [...]
[...] entity called Videogramo. What I believe it is, is a corrupted or digitally manipulated version of Maya Deren‘s classic underground film Meshes of the Afternoon. However, the original film is completely [...]
[...] Warhol and John Waters, but only gets around to quickly name-dropping Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren and Jonas Mekas without even mentioning the titles of their most influential movies or who or why [...]