Maya Deren…

Ukrainian-born master of trance cinema, vanguard of the American avant-garde film movement and outspoken film theorist.  Deren went on to influence Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger as well as David Lynch, particularly his movie “Lost Highway”.  Maya’s first film, “Meshes of the Afternoon” cost a whopping $275 to make.  She was  a director, writer, cinematographer, editor, performer, entrepreneur, and self-promoting machine.

In an anagram all the elements exist in a simultaneous relationship. Consequently, within it, nothing is first and nothing is last; nothing is future and nothing is past; nothing is old and nothing is new… Each element of an anagram is so related to the whole that no one of them may be changed without affecting its series and so affecting the whole. And conversely the whole is so related to every part that whether one reads horizontally, vertically, diagonally or even in reverse, the logic of the whole is not disrupted, but remains intact.

Deren quote  found in Bill Nichols (ed.), Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde , Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, p. 5