The incomparable Maya Deren was born Eleonora Derenkowsky in Kiev in 1917 and emigrated to the USA with her family in 1922. After studying literature, she became involved in modern dance and met the Czech filmmaker Alexander Hammid at the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe. Together with him she shot "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1943), her first film and at the same time a milestone of experimental film, in a fortnight with a 16mm bolex. Her first work was followed by "At Land" (1944), "A Study in Choreography for the Camera" (1945) and "Ritual in Transfigured Time" (1946). Beyond the dominance and productivity of the dream factories and in a counter-movement to the easily consumable and coherent film, Maya Deren captured reality, experienced as fragmented and incoherent, in dream-like moving images.

During this period, Deren also worked on the unfinished film "Witch's Cradle" and published the pamphlet "Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film" (1946). In 1947, she received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and travelled to Haiti to film Voudoun rituals and dances. She then completed two more films, "Meditation on Violence" (1948) and "The Very Eye of Night" (1955). Her book on Haitian Voudoun culture and spirituality, "Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti"(1953), was the definitive work on the subject for many years. Unfortunately, she herself never finished the film of the same name that she was working on. Maya Deren died in 1961 as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage.