Maya Deren As A Filmmaker

Maya Deren As A Filmmaker

Maya Deren As A Filmmaker

Deren was born in Kiev? Ukraine to Solomon Derenkowsky and Marie Fiedler. It is said that she was named after Eleanora Duse? an Italian actress. In 1922 the family moved to Syracuse? New York. Her father shortened the family name to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York. He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse. In 1928? she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Her mother moved to Paris to be with her daughter while she attended the League of Nations School in Geneva? Switzerland from 1930 to 1933.

Deren began college at Syracuse University? where she became active in the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League. Through the YPSL she met Gregory Bardacke? whom she later married at the age of eighteen. After his graduation in 1935? she moved to New York City. She and her husband became active in various socialist causes in New York City. She graduated from New York University and separated from Bardacke. The divorce was finalized in 1939. She attended the New School for Social Research and received a master's degree in English literature at Smith College. Her MA thesis was entitled "The Influence of the French Symbolist School on Anglo American Poetry" (1939). After graduation from Smith? Deren returned to New York's Greenwich Village where she worked as an editorial assistant and free-lance photographer.[1] In 1941? Deren wrote and suggested a children's book on dance to choreographer Katherine Dunham and later became her personal secretary. At the end of a tour? the Dunham dance company stopped in Los Angeles for several months to work in Hollywood. It was there that Deren met Alexandr Hackenschmied? a celebrated Czech-born photographer and cameraman who would become her second husband in 1942. Hackenschmied had fled Czechoslovakia after Hitler's advance. He changed his name at Deren's behest to Alexander Hammid (nickname Sasha) because[citation needed]Deren thought Hackenschmied sounded too Jewish.

Maya Deren was a brilliant filmmaker and theorist whose films and writings have nevertheless paled beside the even larger legend surrounding her life and death. From the early 1940's until her sudden (and some would say supernaturally-caused) death in 1961? Maya Deren both evoked and exemplified the American avant-garde film movement virtually by herself - as filmmaker? distributor? lecturer? theorist and promoter — all in one fiery personality. She worked completely outside the commercial film industry and made her own inner experience the center of her films.

Maya Deren was born Eleonora Derenkowsky in Kiev in 1917. Her father was a psychiatrist. In 1922 the family emigrated to America and settled in Syracuse? New York. Maya was educated at the League of Nations School in Switzerland? at Syracuse and New York universities? and at Smith College? where she earned a Master of Arts degree in literature in 1938. While still a student at Syracuse? she devoted her energies to the underground socialist ...