Maya Deren

Maya Deren

Maya Deren (1917) was a prominent pioneering Avant-Garde filmmaker and director in the 1940s and 50’s and revolutionised film – and her social circles included the likes of André Breton (founder of Surrealism). She wrote inspirational books about experimental cinema, for example Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality and set up a scholarship called the Creative Film Foundation. Her original name was Eleanora Derenkowsky and she was born in Ukraine and moved to New York in 1922 – She later attended Syracuse University and became a member of the ‘Young People’s Socialist League’. Eleanor changed her name to Maya in 1943, which is significant because of its meaning, illusion; it can be interpreted that this refers to the fact that she was an experimentalist, creating illusions in an industry trying to replicate reality. One of her most famous quotes remains true today, “And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images.”

Deren is noted for directing, editing and performing. In 1946, Deren was awarded the, ‘Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures’ a Guggenheim Fellowship (which is an American grant for exceptional creativity). She won the Grand Prix Internationale for a 16 mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1947 for her first film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). In the 1940s she openly criticised Hollywood for being a barrier to creative forms in motion pictures. She broke the boundaries as she defied Hollywood.

Deren died in 1961, at the age of 44, from a brain haemorrhage brought on by extreme malnutrition. Her condition was also weakened by amphetamines, which she was taking on a daily basis. She has influenced and fascinated contemporaries, for example David Lynch’ Lost in Highway (1997) was inspired by Meshes of the Afternoon. In 1986, The American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award – to honour young independent film or video makers. Her films are now shown mostly in experimentalist, and feminist classes.

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