Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde

I needed the book for research for a school paper. It was very informative. Helped me earn a good grade.

Amazingly, this is the first major collection of critical essays on Deren's work in years. It is not easy-going. I would never assign it in an intro class or for an overview.Watch Martina Kudlacek's brilliant and engaging documentary "The Mirror of Maya Deren" from 2003 (get it on netflix) for a great simple overview of her career. Then look at the first two chapters of P. Adams Sitney's "Visionary Film" (multiple editions - get the cheapest used) for a more sophisticated reading of her major works. If you're still wanting to go further after that, this book offers a range of dense analyses of different aspects of her career, from ethnographic perspectives to her problematic relation with Feminism, to her idea of avant-garde vs. hollywood film, and so forth.

Unless you really need to impress a hippie boomer professor with Avant-Garde verbal overkill I would urge you to just take Deren's films at face value and make your own, rather than wading through her dreary overwrought prose.