Maya Deren

Maya Deren (1917-1961) was a Russian-born American filmmaker, theorist, poet, and photographer working at the forefront of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Influenced by Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp, she is best known for her seminal film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), a dream-like experiment with time and symbol, looped narrative, and provocative imagery. This book assesses the filmmaker's completed work alongside her incomplete projects, arguing that Deren's overarching aesthetic is founded on principles of contingency and openness, which give her work singular depth but also complicate its making. Combining documentary, experimental, and creative approaches to filmmaking, Deren created a wholly original experience for film audiences, and this critical retrospective illuminates these productive tensions, which continue to energize film.