1st 2024 350pp Saint Lucy hardback.Illustrated. Pictorial boards. NEW.
 
This is the first full biography of Deren. Based on years of research, interviews with some of Deren’s closest collaborators, and generously illustrated with film stills and photographs, author Mark Alice Durant creates a vivid and accessible narrative exploring the complexities and contradictions in the life and work of this remarkable and charismatic artist.
 
Deren received the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever awarded for creative filmmaking, using the funding to travel to Haiti where she became a devotee of Vodou. In 1953, she pubished Divine Horsemen, a ground-breaking ethnographic study of Haitian religious culture. Although Deren completed only six short films in her lifetime, her impact on the history of cinema is immeasurable. She has become thepatron saint of 20th century experimental film. The aura that suffuses Deren’s legend emanates from the power of her films, magnified by her bohemian glamour and visionary intelligence.