Maya Deren
Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961) was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer.
Early Life
Deren was born Eleanora Derenkowsky in Kiev, Ukraine. It is said that she was named after Eleanora Duse, an Italian actress. In 1922, after a series of anti-Semitic pogroms and because of her father's sympathies for Leon Trotsky, the family fled to Syracuse, New York. Her father shortened the family name to “Deren” shortly after they arrived in New York. He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-minded in Syracuse. Her mother moved to Paris to be with her daughter while she attended the League of Nations School in Geneva, Switzerland from 1930 to 1933. In 1928, she became a naturalized citizen.
College
Deren began college at the University of Syracuse, where she became active in the Young People's Socialist League. Through the YPSL she met Gregory Bardacke, who she later married. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City. She and her husband became very active in various socialist causes in New York City. She graduated from New York University and separated from Bardacke. The divorce was finalized in 1939. She began her studies for a master’s degree in English literature at the New School for Social Research and completed it at Smith College.
After graduation from Smith, Deren returned to New York’s Greenwich Village where she worked as a free-lance secretary. In 1941 she became the personal secretary to choreographer Katherine Dunham. At the end of a tour, the Dunham dance company stopped in Los Angeles for several months to work in Hollywood. It was there that Deren met Alexander Hackenschmied, a cinematographer who would become her second husband in 1942. Hackenschmied had emigrated from Prague, Czechoslovakia and soon changed his name to Alexander Hammid.
Cinema
In the early 1940s, Deren used some of the inheritance from her father to purchase a used 16mm Bolex camera. She used this camera to make her first and most well-known film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Meshes of the Afternoon is recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film. It is a silent film with no dialogue, which shows a record player playing silently. A soundtrack was later added by Teiji Ito.
It was in 1943 that she adopted the name Maya Deren. Maya is a Buddhist term meaning 'illusion', means 'mother' in Sanskrit, and is the messenger of the gods in Greek myth.
At that time her social circle included the likes of Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Anais Nin.
Deren's second film was At Land, which she made in 1944.
In 1945, Deren made A Study in Choreography for the Camera.
Ritual in Transfigured Time was made in 1946, which explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual.
In 1946 she was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for "Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures." In 1947 she won the Grand Prix Internationale for 16mm experimental film at Cannes for Meshes of the Afternoon.
Deren's Meditation on Violence was made in 1948. Chao Li Chi's preformance obscures the distinction between violence and beauty. Half way through the film, the sequence is rewound, producing a film loop.
In 1958, Deren collaborated with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School to create The Very Eye of Night.
Deren distributed her own films and promoted them through lectures and screenings in the US, Canada, and Cuba. She lectured on film theory and Voudoun. She wrote, directed, edited, and performed in her own films.
Criticism of Hollywood
Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Deren attacked Hollywood for its artistic, political and economic monopoly over American cinema. She bragged, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick” and complained 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.
Haiti & Voodoo
The Guggenheim grant enabled Deren to finance travel to Haiti to pursue her interest in voodoo. Dunham wrote her master’s thesis on Haitian dances in 1936, which may have influenced Deren’s interest. In Haiti, Deren not only filmed many hours of voodoo ritual, but also participated in them, and adopted the religion. Her book on the subject, Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti, is often considered a definitive source. However the accompanying documentary remained incomplete in her lifetime and was edited and produced after her death.
Death
Deren passed away 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 taken since she began working for Dunham in 1941, prescribed by Dr. Max Jacobson. Jacobson was investigated by ‘’’The New York Times’’’ in 1972 for developing drug dependencies in his patients, and lost his medical license in 1975. Deren was taking amphetamines and sleeping pills on a daily basis when she died. Her father suffered from high blood pressure, which she may also have had. High blood pressure and frequent amphetamine use can be very dangerous.
Her ashes were scattered in Japan at Mount Fuji.
Some have speculated that her death was the result of a voodoo curse. Stan Brakhage suggests in his book Film at Wit's End that her death was punishment for her involvement in Voudoun.
After her death, Deren allegedly appeared to poet James Merrill (1926-1995) and his partner David Jackson (1922-2001) during séances in which she spelled out ghostly messages through a Ouija board. Deren is a character in Merrill's The Book of Ephraim (1976), the first book of the trilogy known as The Changing Light at Sandover (1982). James Merrill paid for the completion of several of Deren's films.
Legacy
Deren was a key figure in the creation of a 'New American Cinema.'
In 1986the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award.
David Lynch's 1997 film, Lost highway, pays homage to Meshes of the Afternoon.
In 2001, Martina Kudlacek released a documentary about Deren, titled In the Mirror of Maya Deren.
In 2005, American punk-blues group the Immortal Lee County Killers used a photo of Deren on the cover of their CD "These Bones Will Rise To Love You Again".
Filmography
 Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) with Alexander Hammid, music by Teiji Ito added 1959
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.
Meditation on Violence (1948) performance by Chao-li Chi, Chinese flute and Haitian drums musical collage by Maya Deren
The Very Eye of Night (1952-55) with Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Antony Tudor, music by Teiji Ito
Unfinished:
The Witches' Cradle (1943) with Marcel Duchamp and Pajorita Matta
Medusa (1949) With Jean Erdman
Haitian Film Footage (1947-55) assembled by Teiji and Cherel Ito as Divine Horsemen, The Living Gods of Haiti
Season of Strangers (1959) Haiku Film Project
Unpublished
Ensemble for Somnambulists (1951)
Collaborations
The Private Life of a Cat (1945) Alexander Hammid, Director
Bibliographies
Deren Bibliography (via UC Berkeley
See also
Women's Cinema
External links
Maya Deren - the DVD
Maya Deren Forum
Essay on Deren
The-Artists.org listing
Women of the Beat Biography Page for Maya Deren
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