Maya Deren

Maya Deren, born Eleanora as Solomonovna Derenkovskaya ( born April 29, 1917 in Kiev, Ukraine; † 13 October 1961, in New York City ) was an American avant-garde film director, dancer and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s.

Life

The Derenkovskaja family fled in 1922 from Ukraine to Syracuse in upstate New York, where a brother of the father lived. Mother and child came first with relatives in Columbus, Ohio. The parents were naturalized in 1928 and the name was shortened to Deren. Their Elenora was sixteen years old at the University of Syracuse. She met her first husband, Gregory Bardecke to know and became involved in the Young People's Socialist League. They married in 1935 and went to New York. Its moved to New York University, where she earned a BA in 1936, and separated from her first husband. She studied English literature at Smith College and received the 1939 MA In 1940 she lived in Los Angeles, where he was the personal secretary of the choreographer Katherine Dunham, whose dance company was with the piece Cabin in the Sky ( 1941) on tour. She learned the Czech film director Alexander Hammid ( di Alexander Hackenschmied ) and married him in 1942. Their acquired from the estate of her father († 1943) used a 16mm Bolex camera, which she used for all her films. Her first, rotated with Hammid film Meshes of the Afternoon is their most prominent and is considered one of the best and most influential American avant-garde films. The artist adopted the name Maya.

Back in New York City were from 1943 people like André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Anaïs Nin to her acquaintances. A second film, Witches Cradle (1943 ), remained unfinished. She turned At Country (1944 ), in which she herself her husband Alexander Hammid, John Cage and the writer and critic Parker Tyler occurred. 1945 was followed by the film A Study in Choreography for Camera. In 1946 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which she used for movies. 1947 won for Maya Deren Meshes of the Afternoon at the International Film Festival in Cannes Grand Prix International for 16 mm experimental film. In the same year the marriage was with Alexander Hammid. 1960, a year before her death, she married again - the musician and composer Teiji Ito.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, divorced from Hammid, dealt intensively with the Haitian Voodoo Their, financed from its Guggenheim Fellowship ( 1946). She visited the island in 1947, 1949 and 1954 and turned there not only many hours of film about voodoo rituals from, but also took part in ceremonies themselves. Divine Horsemen. The Living Gods of Haiti, a documentary from that footage, edited by Cherel Ito ( Winnett ) and Teiji Ito was introduced only in 1977. Maya Deren's book about voodoo, Divine Horsemen. The Living Gods of Haiti ( 1953), is considered one of the most important on the subject.

16 mm films

  • Meshes of the Afternoon ( 1943). 14 minutes, silent. Teiji Ito added music of 1959. Directed by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid.
  • Alexander Hamid (Director): The Private Life of a Cat (1945 ). 30 minutes. Cooperation between Hammid and Maya Deren.
  • A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945 ). 4 minutes, silent. Actor Talley Beatty.
  • Ritual in Transfigured Time (1945 /46). 15 minutes, silent. Camera: Hella Heyman. Choreographic collaboration with Frank Westbrook. Starring: Rita Christiani, Maya Deren, Anaïs Nin, Frank Westbrook.
  • Meditation on Violence ( 1948). 12 minutes. Sound film. Performance of Chao Li Chi, Chinese flute and Haitian drums, musical collage arranged by Maya Deren
  • The Very Eye of Night (1959, filmed from 1952 to 1955 ) with students from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School under 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 (1947-1955); posthumously edited by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito and commented. As Divine Horsemen, The Living Gods of Haiti published in 1977.
  • Season of Strangers ( 1959) Haiku Film Project

Unpublished

  • Ensemble for Somnambulists (1951 )

Publications (selection)

  • As Eleanora Their: Religious Possession in Dancing. Parts 1-3 ( of 4): Educational Dance, March - April -May, 1942.
  • Choreography for Camera. In: Dance Magazine, October, 1945.
  • Cinema as an Art form. In: New Directions, No. 9, Fall 1946
  • An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film. An Outcast Chapbook. . Baradinsky Oscar, The Alicat Bookshop Press, Yonkers, NY, 1946 reprint: Bill Nichols (ed.) Maya Deren and the American avant- garde. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2001, Appendix, pp. 267ff ..
  • Divine Horsemen. The Living Gods of Haiti. Thames and Hudson, London, 1953.
  • From the notebook of 1947, In: . October, No. 14, Fall 1980, pp. 29-30.
  • Poetics of film. Paths in the medium of moving images. Translated and introduced by Brigitte Bühler and Dieter Hormel. Merve Verlag, Berlin 1984.
  • Jutta Hercher, Ute Holl and others ( ed.): Maya Deren: Choreography for a camera. Writings on film. Material -Verlag, Hamburg 1995.
October 13 Syracuse (New York) Syracuse University Alexandr Hackenschmied Integrated Authority File
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