Maya DerenFilmography

Born:: April 29, 1917 in Kiev, Ukraine, Russian Empire
Occupation:: Actor, Director, Editor, Cinematographer, Screenwriter
Birth name:: Eleanora Derenkowsky
Biography:: Maya Deren did not launch the American film avant-garde, but more than any of her contemporaries, she galvanized, popularized, and feminized it. Famed for her 1943 masterpiece Meshes of the Afternoon, one of the most widely viewed and analyzed of all experimental films, Deren was a tireless...Read More

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Invocation: Maya Deren

Synopsis: A documentary video that tells the history of the films by Maya Deren. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

1987
Maeva

Crew: Commentary, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this intense drama, filmed in Tahiti, a Tahitian girl from a small fishing village fantasizes about becoming the bride of the local boy she works with. When he leaves, she is crushed. She is later raped by a sailor and to escape it all leaves the island and sails for Europe to become an Read More

1961
The Very Eye of Night

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Editor

Actors: Students of the Metroplitain Opera Ballet School

Synopsis: The Very Eye of Night is filmmaker Maya Deren's last completed film. It was made from 1952 to 1955 in collaboration with choreographer Antony Tudor, but it was not released until 1959 when the musical score by Teiji Ito was added. The entire film is projected as photographed in the negative. Read More

1959
Season of Strangers

Crew: Supervisor/Manager

Synopsis: Season of Strangers is a long film made up of little films. It is a "pool film" made up from entries made by students in the Haiku Film Workshop conducted by Maya Deren in Woodstock, NY, in 1958 and 1959. It is sometimes referred to under the working title of Haiku Film Project. ~ David Lewis, All Read More

1959
Haitian Film Footage

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Synopsis: Although Maya Deren's vast, unfinished anthropological film of Haitian ritual dancing was pulled together in 1977 into a conventional documentary, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, since then it has also become customary to exhibit Deren's footage as she shot it, slates and all, all four Read More

1954
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the footage, so this "finished" version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren's death. The possession rites of the Rada, Petra, and Congo sects Read More

1951
Ensemble for Somnambulists

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Ensemble for Somnambulists was a film Maya Deren made while teaching a workshop at the Toronto Film Society. It was never completed, and is officially "unpublished," but this title has been restored and it screens occasionally along with her other films. It is sort of a preliminary sketch for The Very Eye of Night Read More

1951
Medusa

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Actors: Jean Erdman

Synopsis: Made at the YMHA film workshop with Jean Edrman, Medusa is a Maya Deren film that was never finished. It is shown in the state it was left behind in after her death. ~ David Lewis, All Movie Guide Read More

1949
Meditation on Violence

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Editor, Musical Arrangement

Actors: Chao Li Chi

Synopsis: One of the earliest non-commercial films on the subject of martial arts, Chinese master Chao-Li Chi performs Tai Chi for Maya Deren's camera to a spare soundtrack combining Chinese flute and Haitian drum music. Of her films, Meditation on Violence was the title least satisfying to Deren, but the Read More

1948
Ritual in Transfigured Time

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Maya Deren, Rita Christiani, Frank Westbrook, Anaïs Nin

Synopsis: A social event choreographed in the manner of a dance, illuminated by concepts drawn from Greek legend; one of filmmaker Maya Deren's most intriguing works. ~ David Lewis, All Movie Guide Read More

1946
A Study in Choreography for Camera

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Editor

Actors: Talley Beatty

Synopsis: A dance film in which camerawork and editing appears to make the dancer move through a variety of settings without passing through the space in between. So skillfully done that Hollywood dancer/filmmaker Gene Kelly sought Maya Deren's advice on how it was made. ~ David Lewis, All Movie Guide Read More

1945
Out-Takes From a Study in Choreography for Camera

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Editor

Actors: Talley Beatty

Synopsis: Maya Deren's A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) is an acknowledged classic of the avant-garde dance/trance film. More than 20 years after Maya Deren died in 1961, Anthology Film Archives in New York began to distribute the 15 minutes of outtakes that survive of the four-minute film, in Read More

1945
At Land

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid, Parker Tyler, John Cage, Mort Marcus

Synopsis: In this surrealist film, Maya Deren's character rolls up on the beach, backwards. She crawls through a party unnoticed, but ultimately has social encounters with a number of people, and snatches a chess piece from a game in progress, running past at least three of her selves on her way down the Read More

1944
Meshes of the Afternoon

Crew: Director

Actors: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid

Synopsis: One of the most important and influential experimental films of the 20th century, Maya Deren's 18-minute feminist classic explores the interior images of a woman (played by Deren) whose daydreams restore mystery and danger to the ordinary objects of her everyday life. Deren veers away from plot Read More

1943
The Witch's Cradle

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Actors: Marcel Duchamp, Parajito Matta

Synopsis: The Witch's Cradle is an unfinished Maya Deren film made in the Guggenheim Gallery during a surrealist "Art of this Century" exhibit. It was assembled long after her death by staffers within the preservation department at Anthology Film Archives. ~ David Lewis, All Movie Guide Read More

1942