Maya Deren: image, ritual and dream

More than an experimental filmmaker, Maya Deren was a visionary who played with movement, image and ritual as if they were pieces of the same puzzle, challenging the conventions of cinema. Now, the Ethnological and World Cultures Museum opens its doors to an exhibition that pays tribute to her: Maya Deren. A Cadence of Images.

Born in Kiev in 1917 and settled in the United States, Maya Deren was a director, choreographer, writer and researcher, and was particularly interested in the relationship between the body and the image, creating works that drew on surrealism and psychoanalysis. Meshes of the Afternoon , her most emblematic film, became a key reference in experimental cinema and was awarded the Grand Prix International for 16mm films at Cannes in 1947. A work that is often compared to Un chien andalou , due to the hypnotic visual force that has influenced generations of filmmakers.

Meshes of the Afternoon , Maya Deren (1943)

The exhibition, curated by Ainize González and open until September, brings us closer to Deren's work and research in an immersive format. Without following a linear narrative structure or a strict chronology, the show contains projections, photographs, books and manuscripts. It is a journey that explores the mix of disciplines that so marked the artist's work, always in a balance between cinema, dance and anthropology. Through his creations, the exhibition invites us to discover the uniqueness of his visual and symbolic language, a language that walks the border between the real and the dreamed.

The exhibition not only revisits his six completed films, but also gives space to his unfinished projects, showing them through still images and audiovisual fragments. The exhibition includes fragments of his most representative works, such as the aforementioned Meshes of the Afternoon , an essential piece of American experimental cinema, Witch’s Cradle , an unfinished film that reflects his fascination with surrealist objects, and A Study in Choreography for Camera , a work that proposes a new relationship between body, space and movement. The exhibition tour ends with his stays in Haiti, where Deren carried out research on voodoo rites, funded by a Guggenheim fellowship in 1946. This trip deeply marked his work, since beyond his contribution to experimental cinema, Deren was also a key figure in the intersection between the artistic avant-garde and traditions considered non-Western.

A Study in Choreography for Camera , Maya Deren (1945)

Her stay in Haiti, initially conceived as a film project about ritual dance, led her to delve deeper into voodoo as a comprehensive cultural phenomenon. As she progressed in her research, she understood that the dance could not be analyzed in isolation, but was intrinsically linked to ritual, religious beliefs and the history of the country. This led her to abandon the original idea of a film to focus on the study of this spiritual practice in all its complexity.

Deren's interest in fragments and symbols loaded with global meaning runs through her entire career. She defined herself as a poet before a filmmaker, asserting that she thought in images and that the camera was the perfect medium to capture her ideas without the need for words.

Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti , Maya Deren (1954)