The collected shorts of Maya Deren the "Mother of the trance film" who worked completely outside the commercial film industry and made her own inner experience the center of her films.The collected shorts of Maya Deren the "Mother of the trance film" who worked completely outside the commercial film industry and made her own inner experience the center of her films.

Maya Deren - Experimental Films

Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s.

In the Mirror of Maya Deren

Maya Deren's Sink, a 30 minute experimental film, is an evocative tribute to the mother of avantgarde American film. The film calls forth the spirit of one who was larger than life as recounted by those who knew her. Teiji Ito's family, Carolee Schneemann and Judith Malvina, float through the homes recalling in tiny bits and pieces words of Deren's architectural and personal interior space. Clips from Maya Deren's films are projected back into the spaces where they were originally filmed appearing on the floorboard, furniture, and in the bowl of her former sink. Fluid light projections of intimate space provide an elusive agency for a filmmaker most of us will never know as film with its imaginary nature evokes a former time and space.

Maya Deren's Sink

This intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the footage, so this “finished” version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren’s death.