Maya Deren

Biography: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945," pp. 222-226. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Maya Deren came to the USA in 1922 as Eleanora Derenkowsky. Together with her father Solomon Derenkowsky, a psychiatrist, and her mother Maria Fidler, an artist, she fled the pogroms organized by the Bolsheviks against the Jews.

She studied journalism and political science at the Syracuse University in New York, finishing her BA at the New York University (NYU) in June 1936, and then received her MA in English literature from the Smith College in 1939.

In 1943, she made her first film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), co-starring with Alexander Hammid. Through this association, at Hammid's suggestion, she changed her name to Maya, meaning "illusion.

" Overall, she made six short films and several incomplete films, including Witch's Cradle (1944) starring Marcel Duchamp.

Deren is the author of two books, "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film" 1946 (reprinted in "The Legend of Maya Deren," vol 1, part 2) and "Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti" (1953)--a book that was made after her first trip to Haiti in 1947 and which is still considered one of the most useful on Haitian Voudoun. Deren wrote numerous articles on film and on Haiti.

Maya Deren shot over 18,000 feet of film in Haiti from 1947 to 1954 on Haitian Voudoun, parts of which can be viewed in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1993) made after her death by her then-husband Teiji Ito and his new wife Cherel Ito.

In 1947, Maya Deren became the first filmmaker to receive a Guggenheim grant for creative work in motion pictures. She wrote film theory, distributed her own films, traveled across the USA, and went to Cuba and Canada to promote her films using the lecture-demonstration format to teach film theory, and Voudoun and the interrelationship of magic, science, and religion.

By the time Deren had finished filming in Haiti in the early 1950's, she had shot more than 18,000 feet of film but never completed the editing. In the 1980's, the unedited Haitian footage was completed by Teiji Ito and his new wife, Cherel Ito. With a soundtrack by Ito, the completed footage became Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1993), released in 1985, the same year the American Film Institute established the Maya Deren Award for independent filmmaking.

After divorcing Hammid, Deren began making trips to Haiti. She observed and filmed Voudoun rituals and dance. In 1951, she began a relationship with a 15-year-old Japanese musician, Teiji Ito. Deren was 43 and became both mentor and lover to Ito and they lived in New York and traveled to Haiti, filming various Haitian Voudoun rituals over the next few years. She became very involved in the religion of Voudoun, including hosting regular dance rituals in her apartment as well as performing a Voudoun ritual at the marriage of dancer/actor Geoffrey Holder. Her final film, The Very Eye of Night, was completed in 1955 but due to financial problems, it was delayed. Deren allegedly blamed this on her backer, lyricist John La Touche, and it was rumored that she then put a Voudoun curse on him. This speculation came about after LaTouche died within a year from a heart attack at only 38. The premiere did finally occur in 1959 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the soundtrack was by Teiji Ito.

In 1960, she married longtime lover Teiji Ito and the next year, they traveled to New England, where Ito was to claim an inheritance following the death of his father. However, Ito's family tried to block the claim, and when Deren found out, she became apoplectic and had a stroke. She lapsed into a coma and died two weeks later, on Friday, October 13, 1961. Some believe she was the victim of a counter-curse placed on her by friends of John La Touche, but a possible contributing factor could have been "vitamin shots" that Deren had been receiving, which contained amphetamines.

In 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award to honor independent film and video artists.