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Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film
Until now, Maya Deren's essays on the art and craft of filmmaking have not been available in a comprehensive volume equally handy for students, film enthusiasts, and scholars. Essential Collected Writings on Film contains all of Deren's essays on her own films as well as more general essays on film theory, the relation of film to dance, various technical aspects of film production, the distinction between amateur and professional filmmaking, and the famous 1946 chapbook titled "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film," which has been reset here for the first time. There are hard-to-find articles written for magazines and art journals, as well as lectures, Q&A sessions, program notes, and manifestoes. This book will be particularly welcomed by the large audience that saw Martina Kudlacek's documentary, "In the Mirror of Maya Deren," during its theatrical release in the U.S. and Europe in 2002.
261 pages, Paperback
First published December 14, 2004
About the author
Maya Deren
21 books80 followers"Maya Deren (April 29, 1917, Kiev – October 13, 1961, New York City), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 23, 2015
"Last May I had an emergency operation; it was touch and go for a few hours there, and I came out of it with a rapidity that dazzled: one month from the date of that operation (I had to be slit from side to side) I was dancing! Then I actually realized that I was overwhelmed with the most wondrous gratitude for the marvelous persistence of the life force. In the transported exaltation of this moment, I wanted to run out into the streets and shout to everyone that death was not true! that they must not listen to the doom singers and the bell ringers! that life was more true! I had always believed and felt this, but never had I known how right I was. And I asked myself, why, then, did I not celebrate it in my art. And then I had a sudden image: a dog lying somewhere very still, and a child, first looking at it, and then, compulsively, nudging it. Why? to see whether it was alive; because if it moves, if it can move, it lives. This most primitive, this most instinctive of all gestures: to make it move to make it live. So I had always been doing with my camera… nudging an ever-increasing area of the world, making it move, animating it, making it live… The love of life itself… seems to me larger than the loving attention to a life. But, of course, each contains the other, and, perhaps, I have not so much traveled off in a direction as moved in a slow spiral around some central essence, seeing it first from below, and now, finally, from above."
December 19, 2019
"Actually, a man who has a single, true self is not the very model of integrity; he is simply a one-dimensional creature, which is one-step worse than being a square. The limited specialization of being only one thing—"Be yourself!" usually means "Be your same old self!"—is neither honesty nor integrity; it is the refuge of those who fear that they consist only of a single surface and that the service constitutes their identity. Just as a single diamond may have various facets which we perceive in succession, so a man may, and should, have many aspects and truths; and integrity, then, consists in his responding to the requirement of each phase of his life with the aspect which most accurately relates to it. Creativity itself has several facets. It is silly to argue as to whether it is free or disciplined, committed or dispassionate, etc. It should contain all of these at different times."
February 13, 2011
This book is a collection of essays Deren wrote on her approach to film. This is a great book to pick up and read from time to time. Her approach to film is so simple and straight forward, yet dilligent and serious. She works very much with an 'amateur' approach and at the same time is very much interested in technique and doing whatever it takes to get the desired outcome. Great inspiration for anyone engaging in creative activities of any kind.
May 31, 2023
maya really is the goat
always breaking ground, so fearlessly committed to her vision of an ever shifting form
motion ; chambers labyrinths constellations
always breaking ground, so fearlessly committed to her vision of an ever shifting form
motion ; chambers labyrinths constellations
January 25, 2021
So incredibly personal, fairly whimsical in a sense too. Deren takes you through her experiences, goes into the deepest of details regarding technique, and processes the intangible as if she's done it a million times. A most subtle and beautiful piece here.
October 10, 2023
It saddens me so deeply that this woman’s life was tragically cut short before she was to leap into the next part of what I believe would be the height of her creative powers.
Maya Deren writes with such a fervour and passion for not only film and it’s potential as a true art form but for the concept of art itself, that I think is ageless. She truly lived her life in service of creativity and creating art not for the sake of being paid and gaining fame but for the love of it and to further what we know to be art. Her filmography is a clear example of that.
“Unlike the inventions of science, which are valuable only until another invention serves the purpose better, the inventions of art, being experiences of emotional, and an intellectual nature are as such valid for all time, and unlike discoveries which unconfined by the fixed limit of human perception or advance in a different matter, by scientific instruments and knowledge, the collaboration between imagination, and art instrument can still after all the centuries result in marvellous new art inventions.”
So here’s to art, in whatever form it may be. And here’s to the indelible creativity that Ms. Deren has inspired, not only within me, but in the thousands of others she would sadly have never known she inspired.
I thank you Eleonora. I thank you.
Maya Deren writes with such a fervour and passion for not only film and it’s potential as a true art form but for the concept of art itself, that I think is ageless. She truly lived her life in service of creativity and creating art not for the sake of being paid and gaining fame but for the love of it and to further what we know to be art. Her filmography is a clear example of that.
“Unlike the inventions of science, which are valuable only until another invention serves the purpose better, the inventions of art, being experiences of emotional, and an intellectual nature are as such valid for all time, and unlike discoveries which unconfined by the fixed limit of human perception or advance in a different matter, by scientific instruments and knowledge, the collaboration between imagination, and art instrument can still after all the centuries result in marvellous new art inventions.”
So here’s to art, in whatever form it may be. And here’s to the indelible creativity that Ms. Deren has inspired, not only within me, but in the thousands of others she would sadly have never known she inspired.
I thank you Eleonora. I thank you.
June 10, 2021
Me atrevo a decir que leer a Maya Deren es tan fascinante como ver sus películas. Había dejado la lectura de lado por un buen rato, y no fue hasta que conseguí este libro que pude retomarlo de nuevo. El primero de este año! Como el nombre lo dice, es esencial si te interesa el cine experimental o la teoría cinematográfica. Le debemos tanto a Maya.
December 22, 2023
4.5
Sadly have to return this to the library but I’ll probably end up buying my own copy. Worth reading again and again.
Have nothing but respect for Deren’s barely-contained contempt for popular film production. She, like Beckett or Joyce, was obsessed with exploring the farthest boundaries of her form, as if we owe it to the form itself. As if we owe it to humanity.
Sadly have to return this to the library but I’ll probably end up buying my own copy. Worth reading again and again.
Have nothing but respect for Deren’s barely-contained contempt for popular film production. She, like Beckett or Joyce, was obsessed with exploring the farthest boundaries of her form, as if we owe it to the form itself. As if we owe it to humanity.
April 28, 2018
no voy a decir "todo lo que hay que saber sobre cine" pero sí creo que con esto y el bresson uno ya se apaña
February 25, 2019
This is a fascinating book
July 26, 2020
the master, everything i know and feel i owe to her and her writings here... indispensible
Read
October 3, 2022end of my summer
January 11, 2024
“much water has flown etcetera since 1943”
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews