Maya Deren (1917--1961) wore many hats in her brief lifetime: avant-garde filmmaker, documentarian, author, and Voudoun priestess, to name a few. Her influence, especially in independent film, has not only endured but also increased in the decades following her death. Deren was a seminal figure among independent filmmakers about whom legends sprung. Her reputation as a filmmaker rests on only seven short completed films in her lifetime and five unfinished films, though one was edited and released after her death. In the early 21st century Deren, who by then had been dead for more than 40 years, was still discussed as a fresh voice and a "past master who still matters," as the magazine Utne Reader declared her.

Early Years

Deren was born Eleanora Solomonovna Derenkovsky on April 29, 1917, in Kiev, Ukraine, less than two months after the Russian Revolution that forced the Tsar's abdication (but prior to the Bolshevik...