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Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film

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Essential Deren is an anthology of writings concerning cinema theory by acclaimed filmmaker Maya Deren. From the poetics of "Cinema as an Art Form" to tips on "Creative Cutting" to scrutiny of fims in medias res and much more, Essential Deren is a treasury of insight reflecting a life and a professional career dedicated to the highest potential of expression movies can bring. Appendices present Deren's articles in the "Village Voice" as well as manifestoes and program notes; a bibliography, filmography, and list of resources points the reader toward more useful and fascinating discussion of the film as trade and medium. Especially recommended reading for cinematography students, connoisseurs and critics, and college libraries and references shelves.

To place the words "essential" and "Deren" in the same title, much less the same sentence, is quite ironic, for the essence of a thing was what most interested poet, dancer, and independent film-maker, Maya Deren. Editor Bruce McPherson has culled some of her previously published writings for Essential Deren.

Deren, who was greatly concerned with "the distilled experimental emotion of an incident," and who felt that it was "more universal and timeless than the incident itself," was convinced that the film camera was the perfect medium to capture such a distillation. Her writings spend a good deal of time criticizing the general cinema of her day (most of the material here was published in the 1940's) because mass-market films, in her opinion, did not fully utilize the camera; she felt that cinema as an art form had scarcely been touched. She describes the camera as if it were alive, fraught with possibilities: "The complexity of the camera creates, at times, the illusion of being almost itself a living intelligence which can inspire its manipulation on the explorative and creative level simultaneously." Recording fiction (general cinema) and reality (documentary) did not employ the camera's almost infinite possibilities and to ignore this potential, according to Deren, "constitute[d] a gross, if not criminal aesthetic negligence . . ."

The camera, however, was not to create a series of disparate, unrelated images; the film-maker was an artist and everything created by the camera needed to "serve the original intent and idea of the film-maker: "

Extending from theory to mechanics (including very practical chapters on lenses, tripods and frames), Essential Deren is an inspiring read for anyone interested in independent film-making.

A fascinating collection of writings by someone who did not compromise on the idea of film as an art, as a form that did not necessarily need "story", and how story dominates everything we think film is now. I am especially struck by her positioning herself as "amateur" and how her claiming this nomenclature allows us to reevaluate our own positions as artists, how the advantages of this out way the loss of budget. She was and remains essential, and any artist working in any art form can learn something here.

I love what Maya Deren has to say about film and its medium. This is a classic look at our ever beloved art, from (unfortunately), a very technical way. I believe that the most profound things can be said, most effectively, in a very simple way. She wrote probably like she thought and spoke...I just have to re-read most of it in order to understand it. Anyhow, will take me another year to finish, however, I'm determined to finish it, page-by-page.