1. In 1928, Maya Deren's parents became naturalized citizens of the United States.
13 Facts About Maya Deren
1. 2.
Maya Deren attended the League of Nations International School of Geneva, Switzerland for high school from 1930 to 1933.
3.
Maya Deren finished school at New York University with a Bachelor's degree in literature in June 1936, and returned to Syracuse that fall.
4.
In 1938, Maya Deren attended the New School for Social Research, and received a master's degree in English literature at Smith College.
5.
Maya Deren supported herself from 1937 to 1939 by freelance writing for radio shows and foreign-language newspapers.
6.
In 1940, Maya Deren moved to Los Angeles to focus on her poetry and freelance photography.
7.
In 1944, Maya Deren filmed The Witch's Cradle in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery with Duchamp featured in the film.
8.
Between 1952 and 1955, Maya Deren collaborated with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Antony Tudor to create The Very Eye of Night.
9.
In 1943, Maya Deren purchased a used 16mm Bolex camera with some of the inheritance money after her father's death from a heart attack.
10.
Maya Deren filmed At Land in Port Jefferson and Amagansett, New York in the summer of 1944.
11.
Maya Deren had studied ethnographic footage by Gregory Bateson in Bali in 1947, and was interested in including it in her next film.
12.
Maya Deren went on three additional trips through 1954 to document and record the rituals of Haitian Vodou.
13.
Maya Deren died in 1961, at the age of 44 from a brain hemorrhage, which has been attributed to a combination of malnutrition and drug use.