In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Moving Image 5.1 (2005) 136-140


[Access article in PDF]
In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2002). Directed by Martina Kudlácek.


Click for larger view		 Figure 1

The rewards offered by In the Mirror of Maya Deren will differ depending on the viewer's familiarity with Maya Deren's life and work. In addition to her films, that work includes her writings, lectures, workshops, ethnographic research, and energetic promotion of her own and other films that met her requirements for film as an "art form." Except for the workshops, Deren's various activities are well represented in this carefully researched and thoroughly professional documentary. For the uninitiated, the film offers the opportunity to discover why, despite the small number of films she completed, Maya Deren could be called "the mother of avant-garde film" (by Cecile Starr in the New [End Page 136] York Times in 1976); have a screening space at Anthology Film Archives in New York named after her; serve as the starting point for P. Adams Sitney's study of American avant-garde film, Visionary Film (third revised edition, 2002), as well as the impetus for a collection of essays, Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde (2001), edited by Bill Nichols; and become the subject of a three-volume "documentary biography," The Legend of Maya Deren, assembled by Vèvè Clark, Millicent Hodson, and Catrina Neiman (1985, 1988, third volume forthcoming [reportedly, soon]). The makers of In the Mirror of Maya Deren clearly profited from the extensive research that went into producing The Legend of Maya Deren; in fact, the film might be thought of as an extremely condensed, audio-visual version of it (though, of course, it covers the years reserved for the still-to-come volume three).

For viewers who already know who Maya Deren was and what she accomplished, In the Mirror of Maya Deren will hold few surprises. One exception—for this viewer, at least—is Deren's voice, preserved on wire and tape recordings: surprisingly high and a bit hard-edged, without any suggestion of the earthiness and exoticism so often conveyed by her image on screen and in photographs. The voice and manner of delivery do accord, however, with the way Deren "sounds" on the printed page: precise, self-assured, insistently and unremittingly serious (recalling a remark by an interviewee in The Legend of Maya Deren, that Deren had no sense of humor). At several points in the film we hear her lecturing, and in one case, explaining the formal structure of, and shooting methods for, Meditation on Violence (1946) while sequences from the film run on the screen. We also hear her chanting an invocation to Ghede, the Haitian god of the underworld, at a party in his honor. (Some viewers will remember seeing the invitation to that event reproduced in a 1965 issue of Film Culture devoted to Deren and Ron Rice; it also appears in the film.)

If In the Mirror of Maya Deren does not open new biographical territory or significantly revise the generally accepted evaluation of Deren's achievements, it still deserves the attention of viewers who know the films and the "legend." One pleasure it offers is the opportunity to see and hear some of the people who figured significantly in Deren's personal and creative life. Foremost among them is Alexander Hammid ("Sasha," as everyone calls him), the émigré photographer and filmmaker from Czechoslovakia who became Deren's second husband, taught her the fundamentals of still photography and filmmaking, and collaborated on Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Others include Trinidadian-born Rita Christiani, the dancer who plays Deren's alter-ego in Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946); Katherine Dunham, the black American dancer and director of her own dance company, for whom Deren worked as secretary and publicist in the early 1940s, and who, through her own research in Haiti in the 1930s, helped pave the way for Deren's work on the myths and rituals of Haitian Vodoun between 1947 and 1955; and Chao-Li Chi, the Chinese American who performs...

pdf

Share