Im Spiegel der Maya Deren

Ambitious documentary about the life, work and significance of the avantgarde filmmaker Maya Deren. The film looks at many episodes of the almost mythical life of Deren, shows much unknown archive material and includes comments from many contemporaries and friends (Alexander Hammid, Katherine Dunham, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Judith Malina, Amos Vogel).Maya Deren was born in the revolutionary year 1917 in Kiev. In 1922, she moved with her parents to the United States. In the period after World War Two, she became one of the central figures of the avantgarde movement. In the film by Kudlácek, the myth of her person is reconstructed. Deren was not just a pioneering cineaste and untiring champion of the avantgarde film movement, she was also a voodoo priestess, ethnologist, poet and dancer. Stan Brakhage: ‘How can a little girl who was born in Russia and grew up in Syracuse, New York, find happiness as a voodoo priestess in Greenwich Village? This question somehow summarises the history of Maya Deren, one of the most complex and legendary characters of independent filmmaking in the forties and fifties.’This film, based on thorough research and meticulously constructed, was given an original soundtrack by John Zorn.