Maya Deren - Wikipedia Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 Early life 2 Early career 3 Personal life 4 Film career 5 Major films Toggle Major films subsection 5.1 Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) 5.1.1 Director's notes 5.2 At Land (1944) 5.3 A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) 5.4 Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) 5.5 Meditation on Violence (1948) 6 Criticism of Hollywood 7 Haiti and Vodou 8 Death 9 Legacy 10 Awards and honors 11 Filmography 12 Discography Toggle Discography subsection 12.1 Vinyl LPs 13 Written works 14 See also 15 Notes 16 References 17 Works cited 18 External links Toggle the table of contents Maya Deren 32 languages Afrikaans العربية مصرى تۆرکجه বাংলা Català Čeština Cymraeg Deutsch Español Euskara فارسی Suomi Français Galego Kreyòl ayisyen Magyar Italiano 日本語 ქართული 한국어 Malagasy Polski Português Русский Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Српски / srpski Svenska Türkçe Українська اردو 中文 Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Switch to legacy parser Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia American filmmaker (1917–1961) , Russian Empire"},"death_date":{"wt":"{{death date and age|mf=yes|1961|10|13|1917|5|12}}"},"death_place":{"wt":"New York City, U.S."},"movement":{"wt":"[[Experimental film|Avant-garde cinema]]"},"spouse":{"wt":"{{Plainlist|\n*{{marriage|Gregory Bardacke|1935|1939|end=div}}\n*{{marriage|[[Alexandr Hackenschmied]]|1942|1947|end=div}}\n*{{marriage|[[Teiji Itō]]|1960}}\n }}"},"awards":{"wt":"{{Plainlist|\n*[[Guggenheim Fellowship]] 1946\n*Grand Prix International for Avant-garde Film, [[Cannes Film Festival]] 1947\n }}"},"alma_mater":{"wt":"{{ubl|[[New York University]]|[[New School of Social Research]]|[[Smith College]]}}"},"works":{"wt":"'''Films:'''{{Plainlist|\n* ''[[Meshes of the Afternoon]]'' (1943)\n* ''[[At Land]]'' (1944)\n* ''[[A Study in Choreography for Camera]]'' (1945)\n* ''[[Ritual in Transfigured Time]]'' (1946)\n* ''[[Meditation on Violence]]'' (1947)\n* ''[[Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti]]'' (1953)\n* ''[[The Very Eye of Night]]'' (1955)\n}}'''Books:'''{{Plainlist|\n* ''An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film'' (1946)\n}}"}},"i":0}}]}'>Maya Deren Deren in the film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), her debut Born Eleonora Derenkovskaya May 12 [O.S. April 29] 1917 Kiev, Russian Empire Died October 13, 1961(1961-10-13) (aged 44) New York City, U.S. Alma mater New York University New School of Social Research Smith College Notable work Films: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) At Land (1944) A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) Meditation on Violence (1947) Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1953) The Very Eye of Night (1955) Books: An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film (1946) Movement Avant-garde cinema Spouses Gregory Bardacke ​ ​ (married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1935; divorced</span>"}]]}'>div. 1939)​ Alexandr Hackenschmied ​ ​ (married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1942; divorced</span>"}]]}'>div. 1947)​ Teiji Itō ​ (married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1960)​ Awards Guggenheim Fellowship 1946 Grand Prix International for Avant-garde Film, Cannes Film Festival 1947 Maya Deren (/ˈdɛrən/; born Eleonora Solomonovna Derenkovskaya; Russian: Элеонора Соломоновна Деренковская; May 12 [O.S. April 29] 1917 – October 13, 1961) was a Russian-born{{Cite news |last=Croughton |first=Amy H. |date=March 28, 1949 |title=Scanning the Screen |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-union/188765621/ |url-access=subscription |access-date=January 12, 2026 |work=[[Rochester Times-Union]] |page=13 |via=[[Newspapers.com]] |quote=Maya Deren, Russian-born, but educated in [the United States]...}}</ref><ref name=\":3\">{{cite book |last1=Commire |first1=Anne |title=Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia |date=1999 |publisher=Yorkin Publications |isbn=978-0-7876-4063-7 |pages=531–534 |url=https://archive.org/details/womeninworldhist04comm/page/530/mode/2up |language=en |chapter=Deren, Maya}}</ref>"}},"i":0}}]}'>[a] American experimental filmmaker and important part 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.[3] She combined her expertise in dance and choreography, ethnography, the African spirit religion of Haitian Vodou, symbolist poetry and gestalt psychology (as a student of 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, innovating through carefully planned films with specific conceptual aims.[4][5] Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), her collaboration with her husband at the time, Alexander Hammid, has been one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema history. Deren went on to make several more films, including but not limited to At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman, her camerawoman. Early life [edit] Deren was born on May 12 [O.S. April 29] 1917,[6] in Kiev (present-day Ukraine) into a Jewish family,[7] to psychologist Solomon (Alexander) Derenkovsky and Gitel-Malka (Marie) Fiedler,[6][2] who supposedly named their daughter after the famed Italian actress Eleonora Duse.[8][9] Shortly before the Russian Revolution, her father studied at the Bekhterev Psychoneurological Institute.[10] In 1922, the family fled the Ukrainian SSR because of antisemitic pogroms perpetrated by the White Volunteer Army and moved to Syracuse, New York. Her father shortened the family name from Derenkovskaya to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York.[11][12] He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse.[13] Deren's mother was a musician and dancer who had studied these arts in Kiev.[12] In 1928, Deren's parents became naturalized citizens of the United States.[7] Deren was highly intelligent, starting fifth grade at only eight years old.[12] She attended the International School of Geneva for high school from 1930 to 1933.[14] Her mother moved to Paris, France to be nearer to her while she studied. Deren learned to speak French while she was abroad.[15] Deren enrolled at Syracuse University at 16, where she began studying journalism and political science.[16][12] Deren became a highly active socialist activist during the Trotskyist movement in her late teens.[4] She served as National Student Secretary in the National Student office of the Young People's Socialist League and was a member of the Social Problems Club at Syracuse University. At age 18 in June 1935, she married Gregory Bardacke, a socialist activist whom she met through the Social Problems Club.[4] After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City. She finished school at New York University with a Bachelor's degree in literature in June 1936, and returned to Syracuse that fall.[11] She and Bardacke became active in various socialist causes in New York City; and it was during this time that they separated and eventually divorced three years later.[17] In 1938, Deren attended the New School for Social Research, and received a master's degree in English literature at Smith College.[18] Her Master's thesis was titled The Influence of the French Symbolist School on Anglo-American Poetry (1939).[19] This included works of Pound, Eliot, and the Imagists. By the age of 21, Deren had earned two degrees in literature.[15] Deren was born into a Jewish family, but felt no affinity for her religion or culture.[20] This most likely comes from her father identifying as agnostic. She was aware of issues happening around the world, so she looked to socialism as a cure. Socialism allowed her to merge her Jewish identity into a universalist worldview.[20] Early career [edit] After graduation from Smith, Deren returned to New York's Greenwich Village, where she joined the European émigré art scene.[21] She supported herself from 1937 to 1939 by freelance writing for radio shows and foreign-language newspapers. During that time she also worked as an editorial assistant to famous American writers Eda Lou Walton, Max Eastman, and then William Seabrook.[4] She wrote poetry and short fiction, tried her hand at writing a commercial novel, and also translated a work by Victor Serge which was never published.[12] She became known for her European-style handmade clothes, wild red curly hair and fierce convictions.[11][22] In 1940, Deren moved to Los Angeles to focus on her poetry and freelance photography. In 1941, Deren wrote to Katherine Dunham—an African American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist of Caribbean culture and dance—suggesting a children's book on dance and applying for a managerial job for her and her dance troupe; she later became Dunham's assistant and publicist. Deren travelled with the troupe for a year, learning greater appreciation for dance, as well as interest and appreciation for Haitian culture.[12] Dunham's fieldwork influenced Deren's studies of Haitian culture and Vodou mythology.[23][22] At the end of touring a new musical Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham dance company stopped in Los Angeles for several months to work in Hollywood. It was there that Deren met Alexandr Hackenschmied (who later changed his name to Alexander Hammid), a celebrated Czech-born photographer and cameraman who would become Deren's second husband in 1942. Hackenschmied had fled from Czechoslovakia in 1938 after the Sudetenland crisis. Deren and Hammid lived together in Laurel Canyon, where he helped her with her still photography which focused on local fruit pickers in Los Angeles.[4] Of two still photography magazine assignments of 1943 to depict artists active in New York City, including Ossip Zadkine, her photographs appeared in the Vogue magazine article.[24] The other article intended for Mademoiselle magazine was not published,[25] but three signed enlargements of photographs intended for this article, all depicting Deren's friend New York ceramist Carol Janeway, are preserved in the MoMA[26] and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[27][28] All prints were from Janeway's estate.[29] Personal life [edit] In 1943, she moved to a bungalow on Kings Road in Hollywood[4] and adopted the name Maya, a pet name her second husband Hammid coined. In 1944, back in New York City, her social circle included Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, John Cage, and Anaïs Nin.[30] In 1944, Deren filmed The Witch's Cradle in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery with Duchamp featured in the film. In the December 1946 issue of Esquire magazine, a caption for her photograph teased that she "experiments with motion pictures of the subconscious, but here is finite evidence that the lady herself is infinitely photogenic."[31] Her third husband, Teiji Itō, said: "Maya was always a Russian. In Haiti she was a Russian. She was always dressed up, talking, speaking …