SOURCE: "Maya Deren and Germaine Dulac: Activists of the Avant-Garde," in Film Library Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1, Winter, 1971–72, pp. 29-38.

In the following essay, Cornwell asserts that Deren is important to filmmaking for both her work as a female director and for her role as a film activist.

In "The Woman as Film-Director," Harry Alan Potamkin writes:

I have been asked a number of times, "Can a woman become a film-director?" My answer takes two forms. First, I make the obvious retort that women are in demand as players, as scenario writers, and as film editors. Then I go on to say how few women have ever created films themselves. (American Cinematographer, XII, January, 1932, p. 10)

After a brief enumeration of women directors, Potamkin concentrates on Germaine Dulac, identified with both the commercial and the avant-garde film. If there have been few women directors in commercial cinema, proportionately there have...