Product Details

• Actors: Miriam Arsham, Stan Brakhage, Chao Li Chi, Rita Christiani, Maya Deren
• Directors: Martina Kudlácek
• Writers: Martina Kudlácek
• Producers: Constantin Wulff, Johannes Holzhausen, Johannes Rosenberger, Thomas Korschil
• Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: English, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Zeitgeist Films
• DVD Release Date: July 27, 2004
• Run Time: 103 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0002B55VG
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,819 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "In the Mirror of Maya Deren" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Deemed "Fellini and Bergman wrapped in one gloriously possessed body," Maya Deren is arguably the most important and innovative avant-garde filmmaker in the history of American cinema. Using locations from the Hollywood hills to Haiti in the 1940s and ’50s, Deren made such mesmerizing films as AT LAND, RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME, and her masterpiece, MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, which won a prestigious international experimental filmmaking prize at the 1947 Cannes Film Festival. Starting with excerpts from these films, IN THE MIRROR seamlessly and effectively interweaves archival footage and observances from acolytes and contemporaries such as Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas with an original score by experimental jazz legend John Zorn. Documentarian Martina Kudlácek has fashioned not only a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking and influential artist, but a pitch-perfect introduction to her strikingly beautiful and poetic body of work. This Edition features the extremely Maya Deren "fragments" WITCH’S CRADLE (1943), starring Marcel Duchamp, and ENSEMBLE FOR SOMNAMBULISTS (1951).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Creative Woman's Sense of Biological Time, November 11, 2004

By 

Nicholas Croft (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Mirror of Maya Deren (DVD)

Maya Deren is not greedy. She does not seek to possess the major portion of your days. She is content: "If on those rare occasions, whose truth can be stated only by poetry, you will perhaps recall an image, or even just the aura of one of my films."

Filmmaker Martina Kudlacek, with "In the Mirror of Maya Deren", has created the perfect companion documentary to the Mystic Fire Video DVD release of Maya's work: "Experimental Films". "In the Mirror of Maya Deren" weaves together excerpts from Ms. Deren's surreal films with archival audio recordings of Deren's voice and filmed interviews of her contemporaries: Alexander 'Sasha' Hammid, Katherine Dunham, Chao-Li Chi, Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage. It also features a haunting original score from Tzadik Records founder John Zorn.

This 103-minute work begins at Manhattan's Anthology Film Archives, where some lost containers of Maya's 16mm films have been uncovered. It then continues with the reminiscences of 'Sasha' Hammid, a pioneering Czech experimental filmmaker, who married Ms. Deren in the spring of 1943. Excerpts from and reflections on, "Meshes of the Afternoon", "At Land" and "Ritual in Transfigured Time" all lead into a discussion of Maya's 4 trips to Haiti. She spent 21 months there, between 1947 and 1955, documenting the religious festivals of the Haitian people.

Though much of the Haitian trip was recorded on film, the major fruit from this intense period of study was Maya's book: "Divine Horsemen, The Living Gods in Haiti", which was edited by Joseph Campbell and published in the year 1952. Also in 1952, Maya meets her second husband to be, Teiji Ito, son of the martial arts artist featured in Maya's 1948 film: "Meditation On Violence". They marry at sea in 1960, despite an 18-year age difference between them.

In 1961, Maya Deren dies as the result of a massive brain hemorrhage, at the age of 44. She will long be remembered for working completely outside of the commercial film industry, where she made her own inner experience to be the center of her cinema. "In the Mirror of Maya Deren" tells her uniquely dramatic story in a manner that both excites and perturbs. This compelling documentary should now be considered as essential viewing for all fans of avant-garde film.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Since Nothing Was Written Here..., October 30, 2004

By 

mademoiselle_josephine_clementine_pilgrim (1550 N. Fern Circle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Mirror of Maya Deren (DVD)

Since there were no reviews or explanations on this page I thought I'd just cut-and-paste some info from elsewhere...I will say that Maya Deren is a remarkable artist and I am surprised none of her DVDs or videos are on amazon...this was a good documentary that I caught at 3:00am on the Sundance channel.

IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN

directed by Martina Kudlacek

YEAR
2002

101 MINS, Color

Avant-garde filmmaker, feminist art icon, dancer and voodoo priestess, Maya Deren completed only seven short experimental films between 1943 and 1958, yet she changed cinema history. Czech documentarian Martina Kudlacek presents Deren's story, calling upon commentary from veterans of the early days of American independent cinema, fellow artists and critics, including Stan Brakhage, Amos Vogel, Jonas Mekas and Judith Malina. Also featured are audio recordings of Deren's lectures and rare clips from her unfinished film on Haiti. TV14 (AC, BN) Stereo


SCREENWRITER
Martina Kudlacek

CINEMATOGRAPHER
Wolfgang Lehner

EDITOR
Henry Hills

COMPOSER
John Zorn

CAST
Stan Brakhage
Maya Deren
Jonas Mekas

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A virtuous documentary on Maya Deren, December 4, 2005

By 

Moira J. Sullivan "Cineaste" (San Francisco and Stockholm) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Mirror of Maya Deren (DVD)

Maya Deren's life has been turned into a legend since her early death in 1961. An ambitious four-volume `docu-biography' (after a decade of Deren's neglect) begun in the mid- 1970's by Catrina Neiman, Millicent Hodson, Francine Bailey and Ve Ve Clark, receiving the cryptic title: The Legend of Maya Deren . Anthology Film Archives and their now defunct periodical Film Culture backed the project. Up until today only two volumes have been released and the others still await publication funds. Based on interviews with Deren's colleagues, and documentary material from the Boston Archives, the final volumes were intended to treat Deren's work in Voudoun and to include testimonies from her colleagues after her death.

In the meantime, Martina Kudlácek has assembled the pieces of Deren's biography brilliantly, interviewing artists such as dancer Rita Christiana, the "bride" in Ritual in Transfigured Time , editor Miriam Arsham, Chao-Li Chi who performed in Meditation on Violence (1948) , choreographer Katherine Dunham who did field studies in Haiti on ritual dance and apprenticed Deren within her repertoire, and Jean-Léon Destiné who taught at Dunham's dance studios in New York. Her film rectifies discrepancies in previous personal testimony from contemporaries and creates a compelling and credible documentary in almost every sense. "In the Mirror of Maya Deren" demonstrates how Deren's immersion into the principles of Voudoun deepened her understanding of dance in reverence to deity and broadened her artistic repertoire. It moreover provides a holistic insight into the many aspects of her work.

For research on the documentary, Martina Kudlácek - as others before her - went to Boston, where Deren's papers are housed (Boston University Mugar Library Special Collections) and New York, where her films are stored (Anthology Film Archives). Several shots in the film show Kudlácek's lingering fingers on the primary source material in these archives to prove she was there. One day Martina saw an ad at Anthology Film Archives in New York for someone - preferably a filmmaker - to put the films of Maya Deren in order, some of which were still in Deren's coffee cans. Kudlácek was meticulous about the task. She even discovered a missing student film Deren had directed in Toronto in the 1950's: "Ensemble for Somnambulists" : the blueprint for "The Very Eye of Night".Also included in the DVD as extra material is this priceless film, and the incomplete film "Witch's Cradle" made with Marcel Duchamp at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century Gallery in NYC in 1944.