Maya Deren - Choreographed for Camera

Mark Alice Durant's Maya Deren, Choreographed for Camera is a brilliant book that provides a vivid account of the radical and multi-dimensional life of Maya Deren, exploring her pioneering experimental filmmaking, prolific writing, accomplished photography, and crusade for a personal and poetic cinema. Based on extensive research and interviews with Deren's collaborators, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible narrative that delves into the complexities and contradictions of Deren's life and work.

Format: Paperback / softback
Publication date: 07 July 2022
Publisher: Saint Lucy Books

A Brilliant Book!

Mark Alice Durant's Maya Deren, Choreographed for Camera, is a captivating and inspiring account of the radical and multi-dimensional life of Maya Deren.

Durant's writing is as engrossing and inspiring as Deren's art, drawing from a treasure trove of archival materials to give a vivid account of the swath Deren cut through the modernist century.

Through Durant's gorgeous writing, we see how Deren's cinema is a devotion to life itself, capturing the essence of her artistic vision and the impact she had on the world of art.

Maya Deren was not only a legend, but a flesh-and-blood individual, as made amply apparent in Mark Alice Durant's illuminating, loving, and long-overdue biography.

Durant's insights into the mysteries of the image are uncanny, and he has found the ideal biographer at the right time, when the world desperately needs Deren's visionary perspective and artistic legacy.

The book is a feast of life and art, providing a vibrant cultural history of one of art's most exciting eras.

Deren's life and death are framed by drama and myth, with her born in Kiev in 1917, at the start of the Russian Revolution, and dying forty-four years later in New York City.

In her brief life, she established herself as a pioneering experimental filmmaker, prolific writer, accomplished photographer, and crusader for a personal and poetic cinema.

Her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), has inspired generations of artists, filmmakers, and poets with its dreamy circular narrative and enigmatic imagery.

Deren worked and collaborated with numerous mid-century cultural luminaries, including Katherine Dunham, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Anais Nin, Gregory Bateson, Jonas Mekas, and Joseph Campbell.

Deren received the first Guggenheim Fellowship in Film in 1943, and her work continues to be celebrated and studied today.

Weight: 1006g
Dimension: 180 x 239 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9798218003234