Maya Daren was an experimental filmmaker, choreographer, and theorist who emigrated from Kyiv to the US with her family in 1922. Her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), co-directed with Alexander Hammid, is a cornerstone of avant-garde film. Deren’s subsequent works, including At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), further developed her exploration of the relationship between movement, time, and space. She established the Creative Film Foundation in 1954 to support emerging filmmakers, and is remembered as a key figure in the theory, practice, and history of experimental cinema.
