Maya Deren

Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, 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 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 Syracuse University, where she became active in the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League. Through the YPSL she met Gregory Bardacke, who she later married at the age of eighteen. 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 Alexandr Hackenschmied, a celebrated Czech-born photographer and cameraman who would became her second husband in 1942. Hackenschmid had fled Czechoslovakia after Hitler's advance. He changed his name at Deren's behest to Sasha Hammid because Deren thought Hackenschmid sounded too Jewish (which he was not).

Cinema

In the early 1940s, Deren used some of the inheritance from her father to purchase a used 16 mm Bolex camera. She used this camera to make her first and most well-known film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), in collaboration with Hammid. Meshes of the Afternoon is recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film. A silent film with no dialogue, a soundtrack was later added by Deren's third husband Teiji Ito.

1943, she adopted the name Maya Deren. Maya is the name of the mother of the historical Buddha as well as the dharmic concept of reality being but an illusion. In Greek myth, Maia is the mother of Hermes and a goddess of mountains and fields.

At that time her social circle included the likes of André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Anaïs Nin.

Deren's second film was At Land, which she made in 1944. She made A Study in Choreography for the Camera in 1945. 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 16 mm experimental film at Cannes for Meshes of the Afternoon.

Deren's Meditation on Violence was made in 1948. Chao Li Chi's performance 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 The Living Gods of Haiti (film) remained incomplete in her lifetime and was edited and produced after her death.

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 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.

Her ashes were scattered in Japan at Mount Fuji.

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 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award.

Milla Jovovich's 1994 music video, "Gentleman Who Fell", pays homage to Meshes of the Afternoon.

In 2001, Martina Kudlacek released a documentary about Deren, titled In the Mirror of Maya Deren.

In 2004, 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 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 The Living Gods of Haiti (film)
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)

External links

Maya Deren | Maya Deren | Maya Deren | Maya Deren

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