Bits Of Inspiration ~ Maya Deren

Happy Wednesday everyone! Today I want to share Maya Deren with you and hope her innovative approach to film art will inspire you.

Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowskaia (Russian:Элеоно́ра Деренко́вская), was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters 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, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, lending her focus to be dynamic and always-evolving. She combined her interests in dance, voodoo and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion and other camera techniques to her fullest advantage, Deren creates continued motion through discontinued space, while abandoning the established notions of physical space and time, with the ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness. (Wikipedia)

In reading about Maya I found agreement between different sources that Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema.

She was also a poet. The following are excerpts from two of her poems.

It Must Be Done with Mirrors 

It must be done with mirrors 

my head that rests on nothing in mid-air. 

Untitled 

When rains come down to flood the town 

And earnest citizens really ought’er 

try to make and keep things sort’er 

dry… 

 I make water

 You can find the complete poems here.

So today I hope Maya Deren will inspire you. I have offered a triptych for you to choose from.  Select a photograph, her movie, or her poetry (or all three) and create a new poem. Please add it to Mr. Linky and please visit your fellow poets.