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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
  • 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

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