In the Mirror of Maya Deren
by Martina Kudlácek
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Actor: Chao Li Chi, Maya Deren, Miriam Arsham, Rita Christiani, Stan BrakhageDirector: Martina Kudlácek
Brand: Zeitgeist Films
Cinematographer: Wolfgang Lehner
Writer: Martina Kudlácek
Editor: Henry Hills
Producer: Constantin Wulff
Producer: Johannes Holzhausen
Producer: Johannes Rosenberger
Producer: Thomas Korschil
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-07-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Zeitgeist Films
DVD Reviews of In the Mirror of Maya Deren
DVD Review: A virtuous documentary on Maya Deren
Summary: 5 Stars
Maya Deren's life has been turned into a legend since her early death in 1961. An ambitious four-volume `docu-biography' (after a decade of Deren's neglect) begun in the mid- 1970's by Catrina Neiman, Millicent Hodson, Francine Bailey and Ve Ve Clark, receiving the cryptic title: The Legend of Maya Deren . Anthology Film Archives and their now defunct periodical Film Culture backed the project. Up until today only two volumes have been released and the others still await publication funds. Based on interviews with Deren's colleagues, and documentary material from the Boston Archives, the final volumes were intended to treat Deren's work in Voudoun and to include testimonies from her colleagues after her death.
In the meantime, Martina Kudlácek has assembled the pieces of Deren's biography brilliantly, interviewing artists such as dancer Rita Christiana, the "bride" in Ritual in Transfigured Time , editor Miriam Arsham, Chao-Li Chi who performed in Meditation on Violence (1948) , choreographer Katherine Dunham who did field studies in Haiti on ritual dance and apprenticed Deren within her repertoire, and Jean-Léon Destiné who taught at Dunham's dance studios in New York. Her film rectifies discrepancies in previous personal testimony from contemporaries and creates a compelling and credible documentary in almost every sense. "In the Mirror of Maya Deren" demonstrates how Deren's immersion into the principles of Voudoun deepened her understanding of dance in reverence to deity and broadened her artistic repertoire. It moreover provides a holistic insight into the many aspects of her work.
For research on the documentary, Martina Kudlácek - as others before her - went to Boston, where Deren's papers are housed (Boston University Mugar Library Special Collections) and New York, where her films are stored (Anthology Film Archives). Several shots in the film show Kudlácek's lingering fingers on the primary source material in these archives to prove she was there. One day Martina saw an ad at Anthology Film Archives in New York for someone - preferably a filmmaker - to put the films of Maya Deren in order, some of which were still in Deren's coffee cans. Kudlácek was meticulous about the task. She even discovered a missing student film Deren had directed in Toronto in the 1950's: "Ensemble for Somnambulists" : the blueprint for "The Very Eye of Night".Also included in the DVD as extra material is this priceless film, and the incomplete film "Witch's Cradle" made with Marcel Duchamp at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century Gallery in NYC in 1944.
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Description of In the Mirror of Maya Deren
Deemed "Fellini and Bergman wrapped in one gloriously possessed body," Maya Deren is arguably the most important and innovative avant-garde filmmaker in the history of American cinema. Using locations from the Hollywood hills to Haiti in the 1940s and ?50s, Deren made such mesmerizing films as AT LAND, RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME, and her masterpiece, MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, which won a prestigious international experimental filmmaking prize at the 1947 Cannes Film Festival. Starting with excerpts from these films, IN THE MIRROR seamlessly and effectively interweaves archival footage and observances from acolytes and contemporaries such as Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas with an original score by experimental jazz legend John Zorn. Documentarian Martina Kudlácek has fashioned not only a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking and influential artist, but a pitch-perfect introduction to her strikingly beautiful and poetic body of work. This Edition features the extremely Maya Deren "fragments" WITCH?S CRADLE (1943), starring Marcel Duchamp, and ENSEMBLE FOR SOMNAMBULISTS (1951).Bestsellers in DVD
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