Fuck yeah, Maya Deren!

Maya Deren | Usa, 1943 | 12 minuti | BN

At Land (1944) is a 15-minute silent experimental film written, directed by, and starring Maya Deren. It has a dream-like narrative in which a woman, played by Deren, is washed up on a beach and goes on a strange journey encountering other people and other versions of herself. Deren once said that the film is about the struggle to maintain one’s personal identity.

The composer John Cage and the poet and film critic Parker Tyler were involved in making the film, and appear in the film, which was shot at Amagansett, Long Island.

El cine es tan útil para registrar la naturaleza, la realidad, y todas las otras formas de arte, que muy pocos son conscientes de que el cine como tal aún no se ha encontrado. Por arte cinematográfico entiendo la creación de algo que no podría ser logrado por ningún otro medio, del mismo modo en que un ballet es algo que una novela no puede hacer y viceversa.

—Maya Deren (1917-1961) describing the Vodou spirit Erzulie.

The experimental filmmaker was the first person to win a Guggenheim Fellowship for film. She used her grant to travel to in Haiti during the 1940s, immersing herself in Vodou rituals. Her 1953 book Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti introduced many Western readers to the complexity and depth of Vodou for the first time.

Photo of Maya Deren by bswise (Flickr, cc by-nc-nd 2.0)

-Nancy Rosenbaum, producer