April 29 - Maya Deren

Happy Birthday, Maya Deren! Born today in 1917 as Eleonora Derenkowska, this Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker was also an important promoter of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s.  

  

Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer. 

  

The function of film, Deren believed, was to create an experience. She combined her expertise in dance, choreography and ethnography. 

This also involved African spirit religion of Haitian Vodou, symbolist poetry and gestalt psychology (she had been a student of German psychologist and professor Kurt Koffka) in a series of perceptual, black-and-white short films.  

  

Using editing, multiple exposures, jump-cutting, superimposition, slow-motion, and other camera techniques to her advantage, Deren abandoned established notions of physical space and time in carefully planned films with specific conceptual aims. 

  

Among her credits, Deren is best known for editing, writing, producing, co-directing and co-starring in the 1943 American black and white fantasy/short experimental film 'Meshes of the Afternoon'.  

  

The film had been made by then wife-and-husband team Deren and Austrian-born American photographer, film director, cinematographer and editor Alexander Hammid, the latter of whom shot, co-directed and co-starred. He was also Deren's second husband, and had been married from 1942–1947. 

  

With a runtime of only fourteen minutes and on a budget of $275, the film's narrative is circular and repeats several motifs. 

  

This includes a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper–like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean.  

  

Through creative editing, distinct camera angles, and slow motion, the surrealist film depicts a world in which it is more and more difficult to catch reality. 

  

In 1959, Deren's third husband, Japanese composer and performer Teiji Ito, wrote the score for 'Meshes of the Afternoon'. 

  

In the early 1960s, Deren passed from a brain hemorrhage in Manhattan, New York City, New York on October 13, 1961. Her death was brought on by extreme malnutrition. Deren was 44. 

  

In 1990, 'Meshes of the Afternoon' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going into the registry in the second year of voting.  

  

In 2015, the BBC named 'Meshes of the Afternoon' the 40th greatest American movie ever made. 

  

Deren had been active from 1943–1959. 

  

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