OCDChinatown presents a screening program of five short films by Maya Deren. Born in Kyiv in 1917, Deren and her family soon fled the pogroms, arriving in Syracuse, New York, in 1922. While still at university, Deren moved to New York, where she studied literature and was active in the socialist movement. She wrote poetry and took photographs, but her fascination with dance led her to the choreographer Katherine Dunham. In 1941 and 1942, Deren toured with Dunham’s dance troupe as a personal assistant, traveling through the segregated American South and to Haiti, where she learned about Voudou. A year later, she picked up a film camera for the first time. Meshes of the Afternoon, made on a $275 budget, would become a classic of experimental cinema.
