In The Mirror Of Maya Deren

"Maya was always on fire...she was a burning person," recalls respected actress Judith Malina in Martina Kudlacek's informative documentary about the life and work of pioneering avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren. Starting in the early 1940s, Deren's elegant, enigmatic films explored dream logic and poetic connections, incorporating dance, mythic symbols and obsessive images of water, mirrors and panes of glass that set up a series of internal reflections and distortions. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1917, the daughter of a Russian Jewish psychiatrist and his highly-educated wife, Deren (born Eleanora Derenkowsky) was raised in Syracuse, N.Y., studied dance and aspired to...