She had been interested in that country, and its religious rituals, since her time alongside Dunham; from late 1946 to mid-1947, her intellectual and personal relationship with the anthropologist and filmmaker Gregory Bateson sparked her quasi-ethnographic ambitions to make a film there. Clark, et al. Meshes of the Avant-Garde Maya Deren was a director and actress, best known for her work as an experimental filmmaker. Then, just as quickly, she fell out of that world, never to return in her too-brief lifetime. Ukrainian-born filmmaker Maya Deren (1917-1961) established the avant-garde film movement in the United States in the 1940s. . She also wrote a theoretical tract in An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film (1946), which is testimony to her dictum that artists need to educate themselves in old and new . Bill Nichols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). (Deren and Hammid divorced in 1947. [38][39] She had studied ethnographic footage by Gregory Bateson in Bali in 1947, and was interested in including it in her next film. Her parents immigrated to Syracuse, New York, when Maya was very young; she was a naturalized US citizen before she reached her teens. The Guggenheim Fellowship grant in 1947 enabled Deren to finance her travel and complete her film Meditation on Violence. In 1943, Hammid was hired by the federal Office of War Information, in New York, to make documentaries, Durant writes, that supported the war effort. NOTIC) MATERIAL Wry Be CoDR ESSENTIAL COLLECTED. While working as Dunham's assistant, Deren was given access to Dunham's archive which included 16mm documents on the dances in Trinidad and Haiti. Introduces brief reviews of Derens films that follow in the June and July 1988 issues of Monthly Film Bulletin. She and her husband became active in various socialist causes in New York City; during this time they separated and eventually divorced three years later. The sequence of walking up to the gate on the partially shaded road restarts numerous times, resisting conventional narrative expectations, and ends in various situations inside the house. Her imagination was fertile, but her wide-ranging life was a veritable engine of stories that seemed ready-made to be put on film, with a first-person imaginative inventiveness of a sort that would hardly be found in Hollywood. 331pp. The film's protagonist, played by dancer Rita Christiani, enters the frame and with her arm raised moves towards the room occupied by 'Maya' as if compelled to do so. Credit Solution Experts Incorporated offers quality business credit building services, which includes an easy step-by-step system designed for helping clients build their business credit effortlessly. The first craving aroused by her silent films is to hear the literal sound of her voice. [16] In his review for renowned experimental filmmaker David Lynch's Inland Empire, writer Jim Emerson compares the work to Meshes of the Afternoon, apparently a favorite of Lynch's.[50]. Meditation on Violence (1948, 13 minutes) Directed by Maya Deren. In her Glossary of Creole Words, Deren includes 'Voudoun' while the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary[49] draws attention to the similar French word, Vaudoux. Hackenschmied had fled from Czechoslovakia in 1938 after the Sudetenland crisis. From about 1910, however, signs emerged that cinema was on the road to acquiring some sort of legitimacy. The link was not copied. Maya. New York: Maple-Vail, 1984. She had rented the Provincetown Playhouse, a West Village theatre, for a screening of her films on that evening, and, as Durant details, she promoted the hell out of it. including "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film," included in facsimile in Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde, ed. Deren was quickly introduced to high artistic circles through her work as a portrait photographer for magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. It is the first example of a narrative work in avant-garde American film; critics have seen autobiographical elements in the film, as well as thoughts about women and the individual. The edit is broken, choppy, showing different angles and compositions, and even with parts in slow-motion, Deren is able to keep the quality of the leap smooth and seemingly uninterrupted. The lightning bolt in this primordial soup of Derens avant-garde celebrity came on February 18, 1946. An essay by Toni Morrison: The Work You Do, the Person You Are.. Although she had established a name for herself . A few decades later, Maya Deren would take a very different approach. In 1930, Marie, who was unhappy in the provincial city, took her daughter to Geneva, where the precocious girl was acclaimed as a poet by her classmates and also became an enthusiastic photographer. Her films are not only poetic but instructive, offering insight into the human body and pysche and demonstrating the potential of film to explore these subjects. In the years before World War I there were few people who thought that cinema was or might become an art form. It took another batch of independent filmmakersthe young French critics who then became the filmmakers of the French New Waveto export Hollywood successfully from Paris to Greenwich Village (and another Voice critic, Andrew Sarris, to broker the import). Another interpretation is that each film is an example of a "personal film". And use your freedom to experiment with visual ideas; your mistakes will not get you fired.[37]. Exposure to these documents led her to write her 1942 essay titled, "Delicious Possession in Dancing. [24], In 1946, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for "Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures", and won the Grand Prix Internationale for 16mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival for Meshes of the Afternoon. Deren, Maya (1908-1961)Russian-born American experimental filmmaker often cited as the creator of the first film of the American avant-garde and the "choreo-cinema," a collaborative art between the dancer and the camera. (Durant reports that, in their travels together in the Jim Crow South, the blue-eyed Derenwho had a mighty mass of curly red hairwas taken for Black or of mixed race.). Between 1942 and 1947 she made five short black-and-white films (one . 1917-d. 1961) completed only six films and two monographs in her lifetime, yet she made a huge impact on the history of cinema and the avant-garde specifically. Deren is often referred to as the archetypal example of independence, a filmmaker who managed to avoid the institutional regulation of American cinema. US$19.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) [Bolded page numbers refer to the original page numbers of the reproduced version of Deren's essay, "An anagram of ideas on art, form . C. Nekola, "On Not Being Maya Deren" Wide Angle, 18, October, 1996. A lot of sources give other dates of birth: April 29, 1917. Shed started using Benzedrine to fuel her long days and nights of activity while travelling with Dunham, and kept with it afterward. In 1941, Deren wrote to Katherine Dunhaman African American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist of Caribbean culture and dancesuggesting a children's book on dance; she later became Dunham's assistant and publicist. This exhibition looks at Deren's legacy through her own work and that of a . They are attuned to something that runs much deeper than pure cinema or pure art, something that strikes a chord deep within. Geller, Theresa L. Maya Deren. In Movies in American History: An Encyclopedia. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer. Deren was convinced that mass-market films did not fully utilize all the resources of the camera; "she felt that cinema as an art form had scarcely been touched". Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. In Meshes, a woman falls asleep at home and imagines an episode involving multiples of herself, a recurring slippage of her house key out of her mouth, a flower that she finds in the street, a knife that she finds on the table, a black-shrouded figure with a mirror for a face, and Hammid himself, who comes home, sees one of the Derens in bed, and approaches her with a tentative eroticism. Documentary film narrated by actress Helen Mirren. In fact, we do not have a record of Deren having any professional career in dancing but it is known that she for a long time worked as the personal assistant of Kathryn Dunham - writer and dance director. " The Personal Cinema of Maya Deren: Meshes of the Afternoon and Its Critical Reception in the History of the Avant-Garde." Biography 29 (1): 140 -58. Kaplan, Jo Ann, dir. Her relationship with Bateson ended in disasterhe snuck off to Germany without telling her.) 346 p. | ISBN: 9780520227323 | 6 x 9 | Illustrations: 38 b/w photographs. Her mere presence beamed onto the screen her vast inner worlds of emotion and intellect. OPray, Michael. In 1943, Deren purchased a used 16mm Bolex camera with some of the inheritance money after her father's death from a heart attack. Her three trips to Haiti occupied much of her timenineteen monthsthrough 1950. Datenschutz - Privacy Policy Regarded as one of the founders of the postwar American independent cinema, the legendary Maya Deren was a poet, photographer, ethnographer . The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. There is no concrete information about the conception of Meshes of the Afternoon beyond that Deren offered the poetic ideas and Hammid was able to turn them into visuals. 9 (Fall 1946): 111-20. Despite her feminist subtext, she was mostly unrecognized by feminist writers at the time, even influential writers Claire Johnston and Laura Mulvey ignored Deren at the time,[28] though Mulvey later would give Deren this recognition, since their works were often in conversation with each other.[29]. She became fixated on Katherine Dunham, a Black dancer (working on Broadway and in Hollywood), the founder of a dance company, and an academically trained anthropologist. Melbourne where she teaches in the Cinema Studies Department. By the time Deren had put those journeys to rest and returned to Morton Street as her steady base of action, the scene of avant-garde, independent, nonnarrative filmmaking that she advocated had quickly caught on, in Greenwich Village and beyondbut in ways that she disliked. Her father shortened the family name to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York. 1, Part 2: Chambers (19421947). For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here. By 1938 Deren left New York to work with the legendary choreographer and ethnographer, Kathryn Dunham, managing her troupe, as detailed in Clark, et al. 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Her first, MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943), was made with her husband . The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. SKU: 1658. And, in any case, Durant adds, she didnt have the money to finish it. [10], In 1928, Deren's parents became naturalized citizens of the United States. Her efforts to promote an independent cinema have inspired filmmakers for over fifty years. Actor. It explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual, looking at the details as well as the bigger ideas of the nature and process of change. In a notebook, she described her desire to film a street scene in Haitithe passings, the crossings, the meetings and greetingsas a piece of music not haphazard at all but rhythmic, with motifs and developments, a fugue form where each individual is pursuing his own destiny. She wrote, in 1946, that for more than anything else, cinema consists of the eye for magicthat which perceives and reveals the marvelous in whatsoever it looks upon. In Haiti, Deren befriended Haitians and immersed herself in the religious rituals of vodou, butjudging from a posthumous assemblage of her footageshe neither fulfilled her vast ambition for creative nonfiction nor offered an illuminating reportorial depiction of what she was experiencing. Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions. The choreography is perfectly synched as he seamlessly appears in an outdoor courtyard and then returns to an open, natural space. A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions. (While filming on the beach at Amagansett, Deren chanced to meet Anas Nin, and they quickly became friends.). 1, Part 1: Signatures (19171942). Deren was transformed by this relationship and embraced her new life by changing her name, in 1943, to Maya. With inheritance from her father, she bought a 16mm Bolex camera and made her first film with Hammid, Meshes of the Afternoon, detailed by Kudlcek 2004. She runs back through the entire sequence, and because of the jump-cuts, it seems as though she is a double or "doppelganger", where her earlier self sees her other self running through the scene. Theres a special, melancholy tinge to the fate of those who were themselves at the forefront of the very revolutions that left them behind. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007. The actor, a fixture of New Yorks experimental-theatre scene, did not become his characters; he stood, somehow, next to them, amused and delighted. The loose repetition and rhythm cut short any expectation of a conventional narrative, heightening the dream-like qualities. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. A biography filled with primary documents from Derens life, including letters, photographs, and interviews with key figures in her life, such as her mother, first husband, friends, employers, and family. She finished school at New York University with a bachelor's degree in literature[9] in June 1936, returning to Syracuse in the fall. Paperback, sewn, 264 pages, 5.5 x 8.5", 2005, -929701-65-8. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Sylvia Plath, "Fever 103 " In film, I can make the world dance. Gene Kelley consulted Deren about her work in ' choreocinema ', or dance films which include A Study in Choreography for Camera with Talley Beatty in 1945 and Ritual in Transfigured Time with Rita Christiani, Anais Nin and Frank Westbrook and her 'tour de force' ethnographic footage shot in Haiti during the 1950's.. Referred to as poetic psychodrama, the film was ahead of its time with its focus on depicting fragments of the unconscious mind, externalising disjointed mental processes, dreams, and potential drama through poetic cinematic re-enactments brought to life She was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and came from a well-regarded Jewish family . In Greek myth, Maia is the mother of Hermes and a goddess of mountains and fields. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) ranks among the most widely viewed of all avant-garde films. A new era of strength competitions is testing the limits of the human body. Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 American short experimental film directed by and starring wife-and-husband team Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied.The film's narrative is circular and repeats several motifs, including 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 . "Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti", McPherson & Company. 1984. Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film contains all of Deren's essays on her own films as well as . Deren's Meditation on Violence was made in 1948. "[30] Maya Deren washes up on the shore of the beach, and climbs up a piece of driftwood that leads to a room lit by chandeliers, and one long table filled with men and women smoking. Introduction. Meshes, Trances, and Meditations. Monthly Film Bulletin 55.653 (June 1988): 183185. This well-reviewed documentary film contains several interviews with central figures in Derens life such as Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Alexander Hammid, and others. 127847737-Cinema-as-an-Art-Form.pdf - Free download as PDF File (.pdf) or view presentation slides online. cinema as an art, form maya deren. This camera was used to make her first and best-known film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), made in collaboration with Hammid in their Los Angeles home on a budget of $250. Filled with primary documents, incorporating interviews with Alexander Hammid and her large circle of friends and colleagues in the art world, as well as reprints of Maya Derens photography, poetry, essay, and film notes. A list of these articles are found in: Sullivan, 1997, pp.199-218. In April, 1945, she made another film, A Study in Choreography for Camera, featuring the dancer Talley Beatty, also a Dunham alumnus, and it attracted attention in the world of dance. For instance, extended narrations and detailed descriptions of crucial scenes in Derens life, such as the Hollywood party where she and Hammid met and the Morton Street party at which he decided to leave her, have the feel of literary compositionspersuasive and moving onesbut I found myself wondering which details were Durants inventions and which were nuggets emerging in correspondence, notebooks, interviews, or elsewhere. "[32], Running at just under 3 minutes long, A Study in Choreography for Camera is a fragment but also a carefully constructed exploration of a man who dances in a forest, and then seems to teleport to the inside of a house because of how continuous his movements are from one place to the next. However, it is the life and art community established by Deren in New York City that garners most attention. 0 ratings 0% found this document useful (0 votes) 719 views 11 pages. This is thought to be inspired by her father who was a student of psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev who explored trance and hypnosis as neurological states. We talk of rebellion, of being forced, of tyranny, but we bow to her projects, make sacrifices. Nin cites the power of her personality and notes her determined voice, the assertiveness and sensuality of her peasant body, her dancing, drumming; all haunted us. " Cinema as an Art Form." New Directions 9. Derens last decade was a depressing decrescendo. Where the Creole word retains its French meaning, it has been written out so as to indicate both the original French word and the distinctive Creole pronunciation." Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. These signs initially pointed in different directions, but eventually a cluster of forms developed, which were to become the cinema as we know it today. Invocation: Maya Deren. She left Bardacke (they soon divorced), entered Smith College for a masters in English, and then returned to New York. Georges Sadoul said Deren may have been "the most important figure in the post-war development of the personal, independent film in the U.S.A."[30] In featuring the filmmaker as the woman whose subjectivity in the domestic space is explored, the feminist dictum "the personal is political" is foregrounded. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Her >influence, especially in independent film, has not only endured but also >increased in the decades following her death. [9] In 1940, Deren moved to Los Angeles to focus on her poetry and freelance photography. If you see Sign in through society site in the sign in pane within a journal: If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society. Deren's initial concept began on the terms of a subjective camera, one that would show the point of view of herself without the aid of mirrors and would move as her eyes through spaces. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde at the best online prices at eBay! In the years before World War I there were few people who thought that cinema was or might become an art form. How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. In New York, she took frequent vitamin injections, which likely included amphetamines, from the infamous Dr. Feelgood, Max Jacobson (who also treated John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and many other household names before losing his license in the seventies). A woman, played by Maya Deren, walks to her friend's house in Los Angeles, falls asleep and has a dream. The sin. By achieving worldwide recognition for films that she made on her own, with family and friends, on trivial budgets, she spurred generations of experimental filmmakers to follow in her footsteps; their films then found a home in institutions that shed helped bring to life. Deren, as Durant notes, was already deeply devoted to the art of dance, even though she had no training, and she more or less imposed herself on Dunham as a secretary and assistant. Her dispute by mail with her landlord was epic and obsessive. ), Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde, (includes the complete text of Maya Deren's 'An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film'), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001 They lived together in Laurel Canyon, where he helped her with her still photography which focused on local fruit pickers in Los Angeles. Acknowledges the filmmakers she influenced, such as Derek Jarman and Barbara Hammer, and musicians who have recently rescored her films, from Portuguese rock group Mo Morta and British rock group Subterraneans to Japanese-born No Wave music maverick, Ikue Mori. (This article was completed with the assistance of Laura Stamm.). . I could move directly from my imagination into film, she wroteand so she did, with hardly a trace of her lived experience. What made Deren a legend had to do with her powerful persona and leadership in the arts community, gathering around her a cadre of creative people, noted by OPray 1988. In 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award to honor independent filmmakers. Her condition may have also been weakened by her long-term dependence on amphetamines and sleeping pills prescribed by Max Jacobson, a doctor and member of the arts scene, notorious for his liberal prescription of drugs,[9] who later became famous as one of President John F. Kennedy's physicians. With no extant theatre for the kinds of movies she was making, she held private screenings at home and, eventually, a midtown art gallery. [7][8], In 1922, the family fled the Ukrainian SSR because of antisemitic pogroms perpetrated by the White Volunteer Army and moved to Syracuse, New York. Bill Nichols (ed. That summer, she and Hammid made a fourteen-minute film, Meshes of the Afternoon, on a budget of two hundred and seventy-five dollars. Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Winner: 2005 Book of the Year Bronze Award for Performing Arts. Vol. [13] The event was completely sold out, inspiring Amos Vogel's formation of Cinema 16, the most successful film society of the 1950s. A biographical sketch built from nine brief meditations on aspects of Derens history, filmography, and reception. "If cinema is to take place beside the others as a full-fledged art form, it must cease merely to record realities that owe nothing of their actual existence to the film instrument. The cover art for the album was by Teiji It. There were few left in her New York circle who were willing to subject themselves to her demands.. He was an acclaimed cameraman and still photographer; he and Deren quickly fell in love and married. In 1945, Deren filmed another silent short, Ritual in Transfigured Time, the last of her films, as Durant notes, in which she appears. Argues for a serious engagement with Deren, rather than more mythmaking. Published: 2001. April 29]1917 in Kyiv, now Ukraine, into a Jewish family,[6] to psychologist Solomon Derenkowsky and Gitel-Malka (Marie} Fiedler,[1] who supposedly named her after Italian actress Eleonora Duse. She was exactly the kind of personality and performer, of limited technique but hypnotically photogenic, for whom the cinema was made. Focuses not simply on the facts of Derens life but tries to capture her persona on film through its experimental montage of 16mm film, sound clips, and archival material. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more. In 1943, she moved to a bungalow on Kings Road in Hollywood[4] and adopted the name Maya, a pet name her husband Hammid coined. Greasing the bodies of adulterers. [46], Anthropologists Melville Herkovitz and Harold Courlander acknowledged the importance of Divine Horsemen, and in contemporary studies it is often cited as an authoritative voice, where Deren's methodology has been especially praised because "Vodou has resisted all orthodoxies, never mistaking surface representations for inner realities."[47]. . When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. A source of inspiration for ritual dance was Katherine Dunham who wrote her master's thesis on Haitian dances in 1939, which Deren edited. DICE Dental International Congress and Exhibition. Durant offers fictionalized sequences, the biographical equivalent of renactments in documentaries, but doesnt identify them as such, and leaves the sourcing of events and descriptions unclear. In the Mirror of Maya Deren, 2001. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Maureen Turin's essay, "The ethics of form: structure and gender in Maya Deren's challenge to cinema", marks a welcome turn in the book to film analysis. An Outlier to the Pictures Generation Gets Her Due. Although her film work certainly has had a huge effect on everything from music videos to feature-length cinema, and spanning genres from the dance film to ethnographic documentary, Derens reach extended far beyond her films alone. Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. The high-art audience that she galvanized for her filmsthe audience that then filled the seats at Cinema 16 and devoured Mekass column in the Voicewould soon be ready to see the high art of movies in places where Deren didnt, in Hollywood films. As her work has evolved, the times have caught up. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. It seems to investigate the ephemeral ways in which the protagonist's unconscious mind works and makes connections between objects and situations.