Ritual in Transfigured Time – Maya Deren (II)
In this film Deren weaves together her interest in dance with the exploration of myth and symbol. Dance becomes a metaphor for courtship and sexual union. (via)
Key themes in this film are the dread of rejection and the contrasting freedom of expression in the abandonment to the ritual. (via)
Another essay of the same film from Senses of cinema,
Maya Deren, Dance, and Gestural Encounters in
Ritual in Transfigured Time
Some Metaphors For The Creative Process and All Souls are Invited by Maya Deren
From Gerald Peary Essay
She made four trips to Haiti between 1951 and 1952 and came home with endless footage of voodoo rites. What she had shot overwhelmed her: Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti, a 54-minute sound film, was edited after her death by Cherel and Teiji Ito. The latter, 18 years younger, was a Japanese drummer whom Deren married in her New York days. When she died at 44, he scattered her ashes on the side of Mount Fuji.
After her death, Deren allegedly appeared to poet James Merrill (1926-1995) and his partner David Jackson (1922-2001) during séances in which she spelled out ghostly messages through a Ouija board. Deren is a character in Merrill’s The Book of Ephraim (1976), the first book of the trilogy known as The Changing Light at Sandover (1982). James Merrill paid for the completion of several of Deren’s films. (via)