Maya Deren
Divine Horsemen
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format 16mm
Year 1947-1954
Language(s) English, French
Artist(s) Maya Deren
Running time 47 min
Films
DIVINE HORSEMEN (1947-1954) 47'
Description
"When the anthropologist arrives, the gods depart.' So goes, I am told, a Haitian proverb. Maya Deren, on the other hand, was an artist, hence the secret of her ability to recognize the 'facts of the spirit' behind mythological fictions. Her avant-garde films, made before her first trip to Haiti, already testified to a pictorial understanding of dream, hallucination and vision. She had initially gone to Haiti as an artist, thinking to make a film whose main theme would be Haitian dance, but the manifestations of possession first fascinated her, then seized her, transporting her into an unknown beyond surpassing any form of art she had ever experienced. She was receptive, well-disposed and respectful in the face of the message of the ineffably profound, source of the "mysteries". Thus, meeting her for the first time, just after what she called her dive into the 'White Darkness', she was in a state of elevated exaltation."
— Joseph Campbell