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Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

Maya Deren

4.37 · Rating details · 571 ratings · 36 reviews

Includes photographs and drawings. Foreword by Joseph Campbell This is the classic, intimate study, movingly written with the special insight of direct encounter, which was first published in 1953 by the fledgling Thames & Hudson firm in a series edited by Joseph Campbell. Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen is recognized throughout the world as a primary source book on the cultu ...more

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Paperback, 366 pages

Published October 1st 1985 by McPherson (first published 1953)

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Dec 05, 2017 Warwick rated it liked it

Shelves: religion, haiti, voodoo

Maya Deren rocked up in Haiti in 1947 with eighteen crates of video equipment and a plan to film some local dances. At the age of 30, she had already won the Grand Prix Internationale at Cannes, and had just divorced her second husband. No time to lose, this one. Now she wanted to do something different, something related to her love of choreography and ethnographic research.

What she found in Haiti was what a lot of her bright, restless, arty friends in the US were looking for – a complete, ‘aut Maya Deren rocked up in Haiti in 1947 with eighteen crates of video equipment and a plan to film some local dances. At the age of 30, she had already won the Grand Prix Internationale at Cannes, and had just divorced her second husband. No time to lose, this one. Now she wanted to do something different, something related to her love of choreography and ethnographic research.

What she found in Haiti was what a lot of her bright, restless, arty friends in the US were looking for – a complete, ‘authentic’ spiritual system, unburdened by the baggage of Western religion, and one that put physical movement and personal contact with the divine at the heart of the spiritual process. Her project thus shifted from being about dance to being about her integration into vodou society.

If Divine Horsemen had been written today, it would be written as a ‘personal journey’, undoubtedly with one of those enormous subtitles that the American publishing industry loves so much, like Divine Horsemen: How I Uncovered the Secrets of Voodoo, Met God, and Learned to Love My Inner Zombie. Instead, what we get is something – ironically – altogether more dispassionate, a meticulous description of a religious practice and its associated worldview. Though Deren clearly participated in a lot of vodou ceremonies over many years, the first-person pronouns are refreshingly rare, and she limits herself to talking about the religion per se rather than how she was drawn into it.

The one exception to this is her account of when she was mounted by a lwa – that is to say, when she was possessed by one of the vodou deities. It's an extraordinary passage, and Deren wisely withholds it to the final section, by which time she has set up the overarching philosophy so well that the reader is ready to accept what she is saying (even if, like me, you are inclined to interpret the experience in psychosomatic terms).

Other moments are harder for Deren or her reader to explain. At one point, Ghede, a spirit of death and misrule, possesses a mambo (roughly, a priestess) during a ceremony to heal a seriously ill child. Deren relates the following exotic incident (male pronouns are used when a male lwa is inhabiting a body):

He took the blood of the goat and, undressing the child, anointed her with it. Then, singing fervently, he reached down between his legs and brought forth, in his cupped palm, a handful of fluid with which he washed the child. It was not urine. And though it would seem impossible that this should be so, since it was a female body which he had possessed, it was a seminal ejaculation. Again and again he gave of that life fluid, and bathed the child with it, while the mambos and hounsis sang and wept with gratitude for this ultimate gesture.

The child survived. Moments like this make you aware of the extraordinary flexibility with which vodou can endow gender: there are also regular sacred marriages, for example, between a woman and a male lwa who, during the service, happens to be mounted in a female body.

But such bizarreries aside, Deren's real value is in elucidating the more everyday aspects of practising vodou – the physicality of it, the centrality of rhythmic movement and the deep spirituality that can be induced through repetitive dance; she is very sensitive to these matters, and makes several perceptive comparisons to the different moods brought about by dancing a waltz rather than a rumba.

By the time she left Haiti, Deren had, during some quick but productive trips home, picked up husband number three, who would eventually edit the rushes of her Haitian trip together into the film of Divine Horsemen (1985), which was released more than twenty years after Deren's death. She was a remarkable person and this is a remarkable book – creative, self-effacing, generous, full of something that feels a lot like wisdom.

(December 2017) ...more

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Jun 10, 2010 aya rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone interested in sociology and/or religion, Haiti, Voudoun

Even if this were just a straightforward overview of Haitian Voudoun, it would be amazing. Maya Deren obviously did a vast amount of research to accompany her "fieldwork" in Haiti, which included becoming an accepted member of a Haitian village. She knows what she's talking about.
In addition to this are her incredibly intelligent observations of how Voudoun shapes each Haitian village, the differences between "primitive" and "modern" religions and how that changes its society and vice versa. De ...more

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Nov 25, 2019 Barnaby Thieme rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: religion-mythology, vodou

"Divine Horsemen" is perhaps the classic work seriously treating the religious world of Haitian Vodoun. It has long been sitting on my shelf, and I am enormously gratified to have finally gotten to it. Over the years I have come to know Deren's work as an experimental filmmaker through her striking works such as "Ritual in Transfigured Time," which clearly deeply influenced artists like Bill Viola and David Lynch. Her work is visionary and points the way for art films that are neither narrative "Divine Horsemen" is perhaps the classic work seriously treating the religious world of Haitian Vodoun. It has long been sitting on my shelf, and I am enormously gratified to have finally gotten to it. Over the years I have come to know Deren's work as an experimental filmmaker through her striking works such as "Ritual in Transfigured Time," which clearly deeply influenced artists like Bill Viola and David Lynch. Her work is visionary and points the way for art films that are neither narrative nor documentary, and the failure of our culture to pick up on and support other possibilities of cinema is a great loss.

I digress, but only in part, because Deren herself recounts in the early pages of the book the significance of feeling marginalized by the mercantile character of European and American culture, and her consequent sympathy for the lower-class Haitians who populate this book. Like them, she feels that those things about life that she most values are regarded with scorn and rejection by the majority culture, and she was disposed to sympathize with their point-of-view significantly.

And this she did with great gusto. Having travelled to Haiti to make sound recordings and film Haitian Vodoun dances, she found herself enthralled by the phenomenon, and ended up participating with increasing enthusiasm (no pun intended) in the ceremonies. By the time she left after several months, she was a deep believer in the spiritual and psychological validity of the phenomenon of Haitian Vodoun, and it is from that vantage point that she writes her account.

One one level, this book is largely a conventional anthropological field study, or at least aspires to be - Deren is only too aware of her lack of training in that regard, but nevertheless describes the rituals and beliefs of Vodoun in a fairly conventional way. She introduces us to the fascinating and extraordinary pantheon of loa, or ancestor-spirits-cum-deities, who take possession of devotees, such Legba of the crossroads, Damballah the celestial serpent, and, unforgettably, Papa Ghede, the Hermes-like death-clown who bridges the worlds of the living and the dead with his irrepressible "joie de mourir," to coin a phrase. She then describes the stages of initiation in the Vodoun cult, the functions of the priesthood, and various rituals that she observed.

Increasingly as the book went on, I became as occupied with Deren's character as much as the book she was describing. It seems to me she makes an interesting and illuminating case study in the phenomenon of "conversion" in the William James sense. In part because she lacks a larger disciplinary theoretical framework, in writing this book, she is manifestly working out her own understanding of what it is exactly that she herself has experienced, and offering an apology of sorts against what she imagines to be the constant suspicion of her reader that we are simply talking about a primitive superstition.

I would say the book shows its age (I believe it was written in 1052). It is unfortunate the book was written before she could make use of the structural anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss, which I think would have been a great support to her, which would have not only added clarity to her thinking, but also helped her to understand that she is not the first person to recognize, for example, that the latent structures of ritual recapitulate implicit metaphysical statements of considerable sophistication, which bely the often-crude character of the manifest content of religious rites.

The experienced reader of comparative religions may find themselves impatient at times, as I did, at seeing her excavate and struggle to articulate general truths of the discipline that we already know perfectly well, and here I think she would have really benefited from more study.

Given that she positions herself quite consciously as a kind of outsider-artist-ethnographer, it's unfortunate that she wrote what was in so many respects an entirely conventional account. When writing abstractly about the myths of the loa or the various drums, for example, she is writing against her own gifts, which are creative and expressive, and it becomes a bit of a slog. It is all-too-rare that she allows herself to give direct accounts of her own experiences, and when she does, the energy level goes way up.

Nonetheless, this book is a classic for a reason. The phenomenon she chronicles is poorly-known and under-studied, and is completely fascinating for any number of reasons. It's a very worthwhile read. ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Bob Newman rated it liked it

Shelves: anthropology, west-indies-and-lit

Haitian Religion 101 it's not

Let's suppose you don't know anything about Islam. Would you turn to a debate between two scholars of the Sharia' to get your basic knowledge ? Or maybe, if you didn't know anything about Judaism, would you turn to Maimonides' discussion of the impossibility of absolute finality ? The same question can be asked of Maya Deren's incredible, deep, detailed book on Haitian religion, a religion taken largely from West Africa. Although Deren, an artist and film-maker, writ Haitian Religion 101 it's not

Let's suppose you don't know anything about Islam. Would you turn to a debate between two scholars of the Sharia' to get your basic knowledge ? Or maybe, if you didn't know anything about Judaism, would you turn to Maimonides' discussion of the impossibility of absolute finality ? The same question can be asked of Maya Deren's incredible, deep, detailed book on Haitian religion, a religion taken largely from West Africa. Although Deren, an artist and film-maker, writes passionately and intellectually about her subject, she assumes far too much knowledge on the part of the reader. I found the book incredibly dense, full of details which I could not possibly remember, yet giving me no quarter, explaining nothing to me in terms that I could come to grips with. I can be emotional in practice, but in reading a book on a rather new subject for me, I prefer some intellectual explanation, some connection to the web of knowledge all readers of books like this do share. Deren waxes philosophical, lyrical, and psychological in turn. It is hard to know how to absorb it all. She describes the symbolic and mythological significance of the many West African deities found in Haiti, trying also to explain how the New World required new meanings in some cases. Her argument that Africans absorbed some Indian influence seems rather frail. She also describes the role of the houngan, or priest of Vodun, the importance of drums and drumming, the fact of possession.
Look, let's be brief. If you already know a lot about West African religion or its New World variants, and if you want a detailed analysis in a non-standard anthropological form, then this could be a five star book for you. Her passion, her scholarship deserve five stars for sure. The best thing about the book is its insistence that Voudoun or Vodun is a rich, vital religion with ancient roots, so far from the caricature often imposed on "Voodoo" by Western popular culture. On the other hand, if you want to know more about Haitian society, if you are looking for an anthropological work that will give you some operating knowledge in Haiti or about Haiti, this volume is going to prove far too rich for your blood. Try some of the other works on Haiti first. ...more

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May 30, 2017 Daniel Simmons rated it it was amazing

In January 2016 I attended a Voudoun ceremony in the countryside outside of Jacmel in southern Haiti. Alhough I was captivated by what I experienced -- the energy of the crowd, the drumbeats, the jerky movements of the "possessed" -- I couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on. Deren's beautifully and sympathetically written ethnographic study helped me understand, in retrospect, what was happening and why. Her analysis of how African and New World mystical ideas (plus a dash of Christia ...more

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Apr 06, 2007 Alexandra rated it it was amazing

Brilliant, sensitive ethnography of Haitian VouDoun gods and practices by Maya Deren, an experimental filmmaker of the 1940's and 1950's. Deren's fresh, intellectual yet non-academic treatment of VouDoun has kept me up past my bedtime all week reading about the loa, possession by gods, magic, zombies and the synthesis of African and West Indian religious beliefs and practices into modern day Hatian VouDoun. Excellent reading!!! ...more

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May 16, 2016 Matra Muschietti rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book truly is a gem; I've spent quite some time re-reading it as my thesis was largely based on "Divine Horsemen", the unfinished documentary Deren devolved half of her entire life to (her efforts eventually found some sort of public concretization with this book, mainly thanks to J. Campbell's interest and guidance). Anyway, this book gives a real insight to a previously little known world, and it does so from an extremely peculiar point of view, as Deren became initiated to Vodun mysterie ...more

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Oct 10, 2015 Brian rated it it was amazing

More than sixty years after its initial publication, Deren's study of Haitian Voudoun remains a justifiable classic of ethnographic methodology. With unwavering respect for the reality of the religion's assertions for its practitioners, she skillfully demystifies the rituals and meanings of Voudoun - a task which, sadly, remains as necessary today as it was in 1953. Her artistically inflected recollection of personal observation and participatory experience, informed by then-current anthropologi ...more

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Jan 06, 2008 Cat rated it liked it

Recommends it for: those looking for an intro to voodoo.

Recommended to Cat by: no one.

Shelves: truecrime

Who knew voodoo could be so incredibly boring? Maybe it's Deren's writing style, which approximates that of an insecure graduate student- i found myself skipping entire pages of hemming and hawing. It is a good introduction to the subject. ...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Palma rated it liked it

This book is very well written. I enjoyed the documentary based on the book,too. I found it to be a bit too academic and a bit boring in some parts. I am struggling to finish the last few chapter as it started out good but not as good towards to the end. Don't know if I'll bother. ...more

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Mar 18, 2018 Mary Gaetjens rated it it was amazing

Westerners generally think of Haitian Vodou as something to fear. It's unfortunate. Haitian Vodou is a way of life that encompasses unimaginable beauty, strength, grace, faith and morality. Maya Deren generously gives the reader a window into a profound world of love, commitment and surrender. ...more

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Jul 05, 2018 Wilson Décembre rated it it was amazing

A MUST READ: The complexity, the beauty, the depth and the incredible mystery of the Haitian voodoo revealed on more than 350 large pages.
WONDERFUL!

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Jul 10, 2018 Lisa rated it really liked it

Very scholarly, a bit dry, but in the end, interesting. I expected it to be a bit more colorful, but it's extremely anthropological. ...more

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Nov 26, 2018 Richoblivion rated it it was amazing

This book is faboulous because your history.

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Apr 04, 2020 Tom Buchanan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Derek thanks Dr. Feel Good in the introduction.

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Aug 18, 2008 Eric rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: musicians, dancers, spiritualists

Recommended to Eric by: the holographic universe

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book is an in-depth, informed venture into the heart of this beautiful and ancient religion - Vodoun. Although Hollywood and eurocentrism have made 'voodoo' out to be a primitive kind of witchcraft, this book reveals the truth: Vodoun is an ancient form of spirituality and community ritual stemming from Africa. Maya Deren was a choreographer, filmmaker, and poet from the United States. In the mid-20th century, she obtained grant money to go to Haiti to make field recordings of the ritual mu This book is an in-depth, informed venture into the heart of this beautiful and ancient religion - Vodoun. Although Hollywood and eurocentrism have made 'voodoo' out to be a primitive kind of witchcraft, this book reveals the truth: Vodoun is an ancient form of spirituality and community ritual stemming from Africa. Maya Deren was a choreographer, filmmaker, and poet from the United States. In the mid-20th century, she obtained grant money to go to Haiti to make field recordings of the ritual music and to study their dances. Ms. Deren brings the view of the artist to these practices, rather than the anthropologist. That is to say, she approaches the rituals and the people as a fully engaged human being, not under the pretense of detachment and scientific study.

In the second volume of her diaries, Anais Nin writes often about the differences between herself and her fellow (mostly male) artists. She comments on the fact that man has tried to disembody himself, to remove himself from any situation or involvement - supposedly to look at it objectively. The problem, she argues, is that there CAN BE NO OBJECTIVITY. The so-called scientific standpoint is a simple disregard for an entire facet of our being - our feelings, intuitions, subconscious, our right-brain's expansive, pervasive knowingness. This denial of half of man's being has caused him to view the world erroneously in her opinion (and mine.)

To return to the topic at hand, Ms. Deren's totally human involvement with the Haitians allowed her to write a book that is informative above all, and not at all detached. Extensive documentation is given to the basic beliefs of Haitian voodoo practitioners, the roles of the loa (or gods), the individual characters and domains of the loa, the training of the priest and his duties, characteristics of the ceremonies, the loa in the home life, and the role of the drums and dancing.

The writing in this book is superb. Concise and personal without showing any opinion or bias, Ms. Deren simply reports what she has learned and what she observes. She saves the experience of possession for the last chapter. Indeed, until the very end one has no idea that she was possessed. Deren takes aim at the psychoanalytic perspective that possession is simply a release of psycho-sexual energy that has been suppressed, deftly illustrating the various social structures that show this to be false. Possession in Vodoun is neither a release of the hidden self, nor a theatrical display of emotion. Simply put, it's the real thing. Deren describes possession as a kind of 'white darkness.' Participants in the ritual actually do their best to resist being possessed, as easy possession is seen as psychic weakness and can be disruptive to the ceremony.

I could write more and more but just read the book, it's a beautiful piece of writing about a beautiful and connected way of living. Coming from a culture with nearly zero community, and absolutely no communal music and dance, I read about these people and felt the ache in my own spirit for such ritual and connectedness.

Strangely enough, an account of Ms. Deren's possession long after this book was written exists in another book I am currently reading - 'The Changing Light at Sandover.' Synchronous indeed. Check this book out for yourself, and check out some of Deren's movie collaborations on youtube. I particularly enjoyed 'The Secret Lives of Cats'. ...more

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Jan 20, 2009 Sharon rated it really liked it

Shelves: haiti

Dense, thoughtful, and thoroughly-researched, Maya Deren's 1953 exploration of Vodou remains one of the definitive texts on the subject. The book describes the African and American roots of a religion that is often dismissed as sensationalist "magic." It attempts to explain the complex ways that Vodou affects the Haitian worldview, describes how Vodou emerged and coalesced, and explores the ways that Haitians practice Vodou in the mid-20th century.

A pioneer of American avant-garde cinema, Deren ...more

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Feb 12, 2013 S Suzanne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: spiritual-occult, inner-journey, touchstones

This amazing classic is probably one of the best and certainly most respectful writings about Haitian Voudoun ever written.

Maya Deren was a renaissance woman, the grandmother of independent film (look up her short works on YouTube - she is amazingly influential to this day)
she was also an intellectual and film theorist.

While she was in Haiti filming the dances, she became embroiled and converted. She is cerebral, but subjective in her writing, speaking to what moves her about this religion. Der ...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Jody Mena added it

Shelves: nonfiction

Amazing, in depth look at the culture, belief and practice of Haitian Voudou, unique in that it comes from the perspective of an artist rather than a scientist; Maya Deren's words are not clinical as she describes what she witnessed and experienced, but designed as only an artist can to stimulate the emotions and imagination. What a beautiful book, it's one of my new favorites! I couldn't put it down! ...more

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Apr 23, 2009 Beth rated it really liked it

An interesting look at Haitian Vodou beliefs. This book not only details the major lwa (spirits) and the structure of worship, but also attempts to explain the roots of Vodou belief and how Vodou continues to inform/shape Haitian culture. Definitely worth a read if you enjoy learning about religions and/or Haiti.

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Oct 06, 2011 Francesca rated it really liked it

Shelves: to-finish-one-day, film, religion

After seeing Jo Ann Kaplan's wonderful documentary 'Invocation: Maya Deren' at the BFI last night, I was reminded of this beautifully-written & fascinating book. I read about a third of it when writing a dissertation on Deren and had to stop myself in order to carry on with my other research - it was that gripping. ...more

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Mar 30, 2008 Katie rated it it was amazing

An entryway for those coming from Western belief structures to understand Haitian Voudoun. Full of drawings, pictures and charts that were helpful for me to gain access to Deren's philosophy-heavy writing. ...more

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Jan 09, 2011 Jessica rated it it was ok

Part of my issue with this book is that it did not teach me about CNF, and we were all crabby about it in class. It reads like a dictionary of voodoo tradition, which is interesting but the style and tone of the book is DULL!

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Apr 21, 2011 Derek Fenner rated it it was amazing

I now realize that Deren is in my lineage---possession poetics. Coupling this book with her films made for the the complete transformation between performance, ritual, and art. This book will have me focusing for some time on what it means to be in public space performing my work(s)/world(s).

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Oct 15, 2015 Mary Landis rated it liked it

This is definitely more of an academically written book so it's pretty dry. There's lots of good information but also a little dated. Things in Haiti have changed dramatically since this was written, especially due to the earthquake. ...more

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Dec 01, 2015 Steven rated it it was amazing

Shelves: religion

Absolutely one of the first sources to which I would direct people if they wanted to know more about Vodou. Deren's book is an excellent and detailed ethnography, and is really a must-read for any Vodouisant. ...more

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Jul 01, 2007 carmie rated it liked it

Shelves: non-scifi

A thorough overview of Haiti's gods and their servants, but a little dull. ...more

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Jan 18, 2008 Radish rated it really liked it

Shelves: blogworthy

Haven't gotten past the intro; also have a copy of her film of the same name. ...more

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Jan 21, 2009 Sam marked it as to-read

I've been meaning to read this for awhile. I'm curious about her writing, and on such a fascinating subject. ...more

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Nov 19, 2009 Lisa marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Divine horsemen : the living gods of Haiti by Maya. Deren (1983)

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About Maya Deren

Maya Deren

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"Maya Deren (April 29, 1917, Kiev – October 13, 1961, New York City), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer."

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren ...more