Maya Deren

Born: April 29, 1917, Kiev

Died: October 13, 1961, New York City

Born Eleanora Derenkowsky, she was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer.

Deren was a key figure in the creation of a New American Cinema, highlighting personal, experimental, underground film. In 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award to honor independent filmmakers.

Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Deren attacked Hollywood for its artistic, political and economic monopoly over American cinema. She stated, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,” and observed that Hollywood “has been a major obstacle to the definition and development of motion pictures as a creative fine-art form.”

She set herself in opposition to the Hollywood film industry’s standards and practices.

Source: wikipedia.org
 

Maya Deren - Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)

Source: www.zappinternet.com