(In Italian) Sulle tracce di Maya Deren. Il cinema come progetto e avventura by Anita Tirvelli.
Pioniera e leader del cinema off Hollywood del secondo dopoguerra, Maya Deren (Kijev 1917 - New York 1961) seppe affermarsi in un periodo e in territori in cui ben poche possibilita venivano date a una giovane donna. Non allineata, sempre fuori fasespetto ai discorsi dominanti, Maya Deren fu anticipatrice vera, portata d'istinto a dubitare delle formule facili, a sperimentare e a misurarsi continuamente con la realta. Una pratica creativa e intellettuale,la sua, che si rivelo presto piuttosto scomoda nonostante la fama raggiunta negli anni '40, perche di difficile collocazione in rapporto ai piu importanti fenomeni di tendenza del suo tempo. A cominciare dall'etichetta di surrealista dalla quale la stessa Deren si dissocio, criticando esplicitamente le interpretazioni psicoanalitiche dei suoi film. Questa prima monografia italiana sulla filmmaker statunitense intende sottoporre all'attenzione del lettore la sua opera cinematografica e i suoi scritti piu importanti, lungo l'itinerario esistenziale della regista e le tappe principali che ne scandirono l'incontro con l'arte e con il cinema: dalla scoperta della vocazione cinematografica, al fianco del cineasta cecoslovacco Sasha Hammid, ai ripetuti soggiorni ad Haiti, che produssero un film mai montato sulle danze e i riti vudu, un libro antropologico sullo stesso argomento e l'iniziazione religiosa. Sulle tracce di Maya Deren ci conduce all'interno di una pratica radicale, segnata dal profondo impegno etico che innerva l'idea di cinema indipendente che fu propria della cineasta. Una pratica che recupera la piu autentica matrice ritualistica, mitologica e antropologica della settima arte, con un affascinante e irriducibile gesto di modernita cinematografica. Anita Trivelli insegna Storia e Critica del cinema presso l'Universita Gabriele d'Annunzio di Pescara.

Moira Sullivan: An Anagram of the Ideas of Filmmaker Maya Deren, revised edition in progress. Doctoral thesis published in 1997 based on the Maya Deren collection holdings at Boston University Mugar Library Special Collections, including graduate theses, An Anagram of the Ideas of Art Form and Film, promotional material, articles and the shooting scripts of Maya Deren's films. All information based on how Deren regarded her own legacy, written in the spirit of her time. Extensive previously unpublished information on Deren's personal writing and background to Deren's ethnographic research and filmmaking in Haiti. Sullivan spent five years in the Boston archives, creating supplementary catalogues for the collection and studied Deren's incomplete and completed films at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Contact Moira Sullivan

Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film by Maya Deren, edited with a preface by Bruce R. McPherson, Documentext, Kingston, New York, 2005.
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 Deren: 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, QA 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. The importance of Maya Deren's films and writings is further evidenced by the American Film Institute having named its highest award for independent filmmaking the Maya Deren.Includes the complete text of An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film.

Bill Nichols, editor: Maya Deren and the American Avant-garde, 2001.

Regarded as one of the founders of the postwar American independent cinema, the legendary Maya Deren was a poet, photographer, ethnographer, filmmaker and impresario. Her efforts to promote an independent cinema have inspired filmmakers for over fifty years. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) ranks among the most widely viewed of all avant-garde films. The eleven essays gathered here examine Maya Deren's writings, films, and legacy from a variety of intriguing perspectives. Some address her relative neglect during the rise of feminist film theory; all argue for her enduring significance. The essays cast light on her aesthetics and ethics, her exploration of film form and of other cultures, her role as (woman) artist and as film theorist. Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde also includes one of the most significant reflections on the nature of art and the responsibilities of the filmmaker ever written--Deren's influential but long out-of-print book, An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, in its entirety. (Includes chapters by Moira Sullivan and Renata Jackson!)
Includes the complete text of An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film.

Renata Jackson: The Modernist Poetics and Experimental Film Practice of Maya Deren, Edwin Mellen Press 2002.... "a fine piece of scholarship on the life, films and film theory of this important American artist. The biographical chapter, rich in insight and authoritative in its facts, fleshes out the skeletal and sometimes inaccurate information published on Deren in the various anthologies. Jackson's extended analysis of the 1946 Anagram of Ideas on Art Form and Film also redresses the long absence in cinema studies of any serious consideration of this complex and principled treatise on the conjunction of issues in art, ethics, and motion pictures. In addition, the author investigates Deren's long involvement with Haitian cultureparticularly its dance forms and religious practicesand clarifies previously cloudy information regarding Deren's unfinished film on Voudoun". - Catrina Neiman, co author of The Legend of Maya Deren.