Maya Deren (; born Eleonora Derenkovskaya; Ukrainian: Елеонора Деренковська; May 12 [O.S. April 29] 1917 – October 13, 1961) was an American experimental filmmaker and important part of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.
The function of film, Deren believed, was to create an experience. She combined her expertise in dance and choreography, ethnography, the African spirit religion of Haitian Vodou, symbolist poetry and gestalt psychology (as a student of Kurt Koffka) in a series of perceptual, black-and-white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump-cutting, superimposition, slow-motion, and other camera techniques to her advantage, Deren abandoned established notions of physical space and time, innovating through carefully planned films with specific conceptual aims.
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), her collaboration with her husband at the time, Alexander Hammid, has been one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema history. Deren went on to make several more films, including but not limited to At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman, her camerawoman.
Read more...The May 12, 1917 was a Saturday under the star sign of ♉. It was the 131 day of the year. President of the United States was Woodrow Wilson.
If you were born on this day, you are 108 years old. Your last birthday was on the Monday, May 12, 2025, 125 days ago. Your next birthday is on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in 239 days. You have lived for 39,572 days, or about 949,736 hours, or about 56,984,172 minutes, or about 3,419,050,320 seconds.
Date: 12 May 1917
Special to The New York Times
International News Service sued by T. H. Lamb and H. P. Moore for alleged violation of copyright on picture of the Appam
Date: 13 May 1917
THE tax of 10 per cent, on admissions included in the proposed war revenue bill is giving the theatrical managers pause.
Date: 13 May 1917
The tumult in the wheat markets yesterday was without parallel in the trade. Messrs. Earle and stoddard of the British Wheat Buying Commission stated after the close of the market that they were not responsible for the excited rise in the July position to the basis of $2.75. They attributed the advance to a belief on the part of the trade that July would be old crop wheat, and therefore worth as much...
Date: 13 May 1917
THOUGH the name of General Baron Friedrich von Falkenhausen, who has just been appointed Governor General of Belgium to succeed the late General von Bissing,has appeared only a few times in the war news, he has been...
Date: 13 May 1917
Corriere Della Sera reports that Swiss Govt. has informed Berlin that recent commercial agreement cannot be carried out because of rescinding of transportation contracts by all Amer. S. S. Cos.; Amer. Govt. said to have proposed to all neutrals that their supplies would be assured if they agreed to suspend absolutely all exports to Germany