Maya Deren Essays

  • Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren

    1358 Words  | 3 Pages

    Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren is one of the most intriguing and significant experimental films of the 1940’s. Maya Deren is a surrealist experimental filmmaker who explores themes like yearning, obsession, loss and mortality in her films. In Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren is highly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theory of expressing the realms of the subconscious mind through a dream. Meshes of the Afternoon, is a narration of her own experience with the subconscious mind that draws the

  • Maya Deren: American Experimental Filmmakers

    849 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Deren was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren is a multi-genre artist who is primarily known as a filmmaker but who also worked in dance, poetry, and film theory, paid special attention to the materials involved in film and filmmaking. Her films include multiple images of fabric and textiles, and her writings consistently note the physical components involved in filmmaking, the cameras instrument

  • Maya Deren and Her Successful Integration of Dance and Film

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Deren and Her Successful Integration of Dance and Film The topic of dance films could not be discussed without mentioning Maya Deren. A dancer, ethnographer, philosopher, and “visual poet”, Maya Deren is said to have given birth to the American avant-garde film movement. Born Eleanora Derenkovskaya on April 29, 1917, in Kiev, Ukraine, (the year of the Russian Revolution), she was a revolutionary innovator from the start. She was born to her beloved mother Marie Fiedler and father Solomon

  • Maya Daren: Maya Deren

    1284 Words  | 3 Pages

    Maya Daren Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Maya Deren supported the artistic freedom, and especially the idea of non-fetishization of the woman figure, which sets herself in opposition to the feature production of the “male-controlled Hollywood film industry” (Rabinovitz), and it's artistic, political and economic monopoly over the American cinema. Hence, she is one of the most influential figures in the American post-war development of the personal, independent film. (Kay and Peary) Her entrepreneurial

  • How Cinema and Theater Convey Pleasure in the Acts of Search and Lust

    1863 Words  | 4 Pages

    audience’s desires, Mulvey suggests how filmmakers use this knowledge to create film that panders to our innate desires. In “Meshes of the Afternoon” by Maya Deren and “Vertigo” by Alfred Hitchcock, it is seen that Mulvey’s argument—the desire to look, the hunting, seeking, and watching, and harnessing of the female form is natural human desire. Deren and Hitchcock will use entirely different techniques to achieve that sense of fulfillment for the audience. But how does this watching and looking translate

  • Into the Wild: The Spiritual Journey of Chris McCandless

    1229 Words  | 3 Pages

    Christopher “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless was a dreamer. However, unlike most of us nowadays, Christopher turned his desire for adventure into reality. Similar to Buddha, he gave up his wealth, family, home, and most possessions except the ones he carried before embarking on his journey. He traveled by various methods, mostly on foot, to eventually reach his desired goal in the Alaskan wilderness. Unfortunately, due to various mistakes, Christopher ultimately passed and his body was found in

  • Freedom comes from within yourself

    1180 Words  | 3 Pages

    you also have to understand its relation to words like Samsara, Avidya, Maya and Moksha. These are all part of the journey towards the Hindu concept of freedom. Samsara is important in defining freedom in Hindu terms because it is what you want freedom from. Samsara is the continuous cycle of life that takes place in the material world. It is thought of as a negative because it keeps us from moving on and up spiritually. Maya is a concept in Hinduism that relates to man disillusioning himself. The

  • KamaSutra and the War Between the Sexes

    1836 Words  | 4 Pages

    princess and Maya, her maid. Maya was always in Tara's shadow. Everything she used were the leftovers of the Princess. Maya always had to move in Tara's shadow. Even though she was prettier and more accomplished in the arts Maya could never be seen as Tara's equal. To avenge herself Maya seduces Tara's husband, the king of a neighboring province. For Maya it's only an act of revenge, for now Tara will have to spend the rest of her life with what Maya had used. On Tara's wedding night, Maya offers herself

  • Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Book Report

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Book Report Section I 1. In the text "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" a young black girl is growing up with racism surrounding her. It is very interesting how the author Maya Angelou was there and the way she described every detail with great passion. In the book Maya and Bailey move to a lot of places, which are, Stamps, Arkansas; St. Louis, Missouri; and San Francisco, California. Maya comes threw these places with many thing happening to her

  • Maya Angelou: A Source of Humanity

    1332 Words  | 3 Pages

    Maya Angelou: A Source of Humanity "I am human," Angelou said, "and nothing human can be alien to me" (Shafer). Maya Angelou just may be the most "human" person in the world. Indeed, with all of the struggles she went through in her early life, her humanness increasingly deepened. Her life was characterized by the instability of her childhood and her family, along with the challenge of being a black woman growing up in 19th century America. The deepness of her humanness is evident in all

  • Identity in Maya Angelou's Graduation

    1173 Words  | 3 Pages

    commented on the fact of how easily he and his comrades could joke and carry normal conversation merely minutes after having killed other soldiers. The dramatic change from a stalking killing machine to a “good ol’ drinking buddy” was astonishing. Maya Angelou describes in her essay “Graduation” an abrupt shift in identity that she experienced. During her 8th grade commencement ceremony, she became painfully aware of the prejudice and stereotypes that haunt her race. She also realized the history

  • Our Grandmothers By Maya Angel

    697 Words  | 2 Pages

    Grandmothers'; by Maya Angelou Image (Imagery) – Descriptive poetry flourished. One basic meaning for ‘image’ is provided by that context, but other, looser and more treacherous, meanings have accreted: any sensuous effect provoked by literary language; any striking language; metaphor; symbol; any figure. Maya Angelou’s poem, “Our Grandmother’s,'; vividly exemplifies a sense of imagery that is brought to life. The most effective way that, Maya Angelou presents

  • Maya Angelou

    1039 Words  | 3 Pages

    Maya Angelou By consistently weaving the theme of motherhood into her literature, Maya Angelou creates both personal narratives and poems that the reader can relate to. Her exploration of this universal theme lends itself to a very large and diverse audience.  Throughout Angelou's works, she allows her followers to witness her metamorphosis through different aspects of motherhood. Well-worked themes are always present in Angelou's works-  self- acceptance, race

  • Maya Angelou as a Caged Bird

    1156 Words  | 3 Pages

    Maya Angelou as a Caged Bird The graduation scene from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings illustrates how, living in the midst of racism and unequal access to opportunity, Maya Angelou was able to surmount the obstacles that stood in her way of intellectual develop and find "higher ground."  One of the largest factors responsible for Angelou's academic success was her dedication to and capacity for hard work, "My work alone has awarded me a top place...No absences, no tardinesses, and my academic

  • Maya Angelou

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    Maya Angelou "I had decided that St. Louis was a foreign country. In my mind I had only stayed there for a few weeks. As quickly as I understood that I had not reached my home, I sneaked away to Robin's Hood's Forest and the caves of Alley Oop where all reality was unreal and even that changed my day. I carried the same shield that I had used in Stamps: 'I didn't come to stay.'" In Maya Angelou's autobiographical novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", tender-hearted Marguerite Johnson, renamed

  • Maya Angelou’s The Graduation

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    distinct level of growth, is sometimes acknowledged with the pomp and circumstance of the grand commencement ceremony, but many times the graduation is as whisper soft and natural as taking a breath. In the moving autobiographical essay, "The Graduation," Maya Angelou effectively applies three rhetorical strategies - an expressive voice, illustrative comparison and contrast, and flowing sentences bursting with vivid simile and delightful imagery - to examine the personal growth of humans caught in the adversity

  • Prudence Macintosh

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    writing was the job for her. Besides her parents, Maya Angelou was another huge influence on Mrs. Mackintosh. Angelou and Mrs. Mackintosh grew up only twenty five miles apart, but there lives were extremely different. Maya Angelou is sixteen years older so she started her writing career when Prudence Mackintosh was a child. Mackintosh says, "Maya Angelou's first book, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", was an especially strong stuff for me. Maya Angelous' black childhood experiences in Stamp, Arkansas

  • I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

    757 Words  | 2 Pages

    up in a small town in Arkansas, Maya Angelou has evolved into an influential, wise, and respected woman. She has overcome obstacles and has grown into one of the élite intellectual people of this country, and perhaps the world. Along her numerous struggles, various people have given her positive guidance and passed down their knowledge to her. Among these people was Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a person in which Maya respected greatly. She was a dignified person that Maya could strive to achieve the gratitude

  • Race Relations in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    Race Relations in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou The reasons listed by the censors for banning I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings do not explain the widespread controversy around the novel. There is reason to believe that the question of the novel is in its poignant portrayal of race relations. This explains why the novel has been most controversial in the South, where racial tension is historically worst, and where the novel is partially set. Therefore, understanding the blatant

  • Maya Angelou at Rutgers

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Angelou was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She is a poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director. She lectures throughout the United States and abroad and is Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina since 1981. She has published ten best selling books and numerous magazine articles earning her Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations. At the request of President Clinton, she wrote and delivered