Dancer, ethnographer, philosopher, and “visual poet” Maya Deren (1917–1961) gave birth to the American avant-garde film movement of the postwar era in America, and her work remains key to our understanding of the modern cinema. Born Eleanora Derenkovskaya in the year of the Russian Revolution in Kiev, Ukraine, she emigrated as a child with her family to upstate New York, where her father shortened the family name to Deren and set up his psychiatric practice. A student activist in college, Deren was briefly married to a socialist student of Russian origin. Her interest in dance led her to join the company of Katherine Dunham, the choreographer, dancer, and anthropologist whom she accompanied, as secretary, on a national tour. In Los Angeles with Dunham, Deren met the man who was to become her second husband: Czech emigrè filmmaker Alexander Hammid. With his help, Deren turned to film and began her career with a modest, black-and-white psychodrama that would become the founding text of a new American cinema.

As filmmaker Robert Gardner has noted, “Deren’s wide sensibilities included interest in such plastic forms as dance and sculpture; and she excelled in the literary arts.” No less important was her remarkable activism on behalf of an emerging poetic cinema, which she nurtured through her writings, cross-country lecture-screening tours, and even a few combative sessions with less committed gatekeepers of the arts—most famously, an all-male panel that included the playwright Arthur Miller and poet Dylan Thomas. Deren’s advocacy and the example of her own productions were catalytic to the critical recognition of experimental cinema in this country and to the emergence of an entire generation of young practioners who, through the vitality of their work, expanded her singular vision and passion. This retrospective includes a nearly complete survey of Deren’s completed work as well as a new feature-length portrait of the artist.