- An Introduction to the Notebook of Maya Deren

An Introduction to the Notebook of Maya Deren, 1947, Catrina Neiman
October, Vol 14 (Autumn 1980), pp. 3–15
The MIT Press

Maya Deren was besides a filmmaker also a theoretician of some stature and a photographer. 
The notes that this text is referring to were written in 1946/47 in the course of planning what Deren called her ‘Film-In-Progress”. 
In this film she wanted to mix images of Haitian, Balinese and Najavo ritual with images of children's games filmed in the streets of New York. Deren was already interested in children's play while she was making Ritual in Transfigured Time, but cut this out at the last moment.

In 'Thematic Statement she voices her fear that, by juxtaposing games with rituals, she runs the risk of the rituals being observed with the same "amused tolerance" with which we observe the doing of children (and artist, she noted). In order to protect the integrety of the rituals, she felt compelled "to enlist the advice of anthropologists"'