- An Introduction to the Notebook of Maya Deren

NOT FINISHED YET

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"'

===== Timeline:
1940: She got interested in the work of Katherine Dunham, who was an anthropologist and choreographer. She went on tour with her as her assistant, while working in the mean time on her study in Haitian ritual. This resulted in a three part essay “Religious Possession in Dancing” (1942)

In 1941 she planned to go to Haiti to write about dance and religious possession, the entrance of the USA into WW2 (1942) delayed this from happening


In 1942 Bateson + Meads published the monograph Balinese character: a Photographic Analysis. Which examines posture and gesture frame by frame. 


1943: Meshes of the Afternoon

1945: Choreography for camera

1946: Ritual in Transfigured Time



February 1947: Deren wrote Thematic Statement as part of her application to renew the Guggenheim Foundation fellowship 


In 1947 she went to Haiti to study the Vodoun Religion

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