Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde
"Finally, after all these years, a book from a major American academic press about a major figure from the American film avant-garde! Leave it to Bill Nichols, whose books on documentary have been a major service to the field of independent cinema, to offer us not only a new set of readings of Maya Deren by Annette Michelson, Maureen Turim, Lucy Fischer, Jane Brakhage Wodening, and others but also to retrieve from obscurity Deren's ownAnagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film.It's about time!"—Scott MacDonald, author of "The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films About Place""If you thought Maya Deren equals Meshes of the Afternoon, this volume demands you junk that reductionist view to join a more expansive, significant exhumation of her legacy deploying an exhilarating multiplicity of methodologies and concerns. This wide-ranging, virtuoso volume torques the myths and legends clouding Deren to restore her as a major force in oppositional American film culture, on par with Vertov, Eisenstein, and Godard."—Patricia R. Zimmerman, author ofStates of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies