From: JEFFREY PAULL (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Mar 04 2010 - 03:13:34 PST
That's all I wanted to tell you.
It's was a great pleasure to read your well-crafted language about your thoughts that really matter.
I infer that shows you respect your ideas, your reader, and the pleasures of language itself.
- Especially so because this is "just" an email.
- Jeffrey Paull
On Wed 03/03/10 00:25 , Robert Schaller email suppressed sent:
> I must say that I have found this debate a bit disheartening. I, for one,
>
> would love to see this footage. Maya Deren was a great filmmaker and
>
> thinker, and as such immersed herself in Voudoun culture, and filmed its
>
> rituals from about as close to a position of hybrid between participant and
>
> trained filmmaker as we could hope to get. With all due respect to others
>
> that documented these rituals around this time, none of them have the
>
> abilities as a filmmaker that Maya Deren had. It seems to me that the fact
>
> that we have this footage at all is a unique confluence of talent, interest
>
> in, and access to a profound subject that seems priceless.
>
>
>
> On a personal note, I recently had the opportunity to make a film in Haiti.
>
> I had lived in a Haitian neighborhood in Florida, taught a course in
>
> documentary making at a predominantly Haitian high school there, and took
> an
> intensive course in the language in Boston. I found myself constantly
>
> wondering about Maya Deren's film that I had never seen. I have to assume
>
> that it was as inspired as her book Divine Horsemen, full bibliographic
>
> attributions or no. Speaking as an experimental filmmaker with an interest
>
> in documentary making, I find the question of how what one films relates to
>
> the world it purports to represent a crucial one. Here we have film that
>
> shows how Maya Deren addressed this issue, in a context that was engaging
>
> and profoundly meaningful to her. I can't speak for anyone else, but it
>
> would certainly do me good to see what she came up with. If she was unable
>
> or unwilling to edit the footage, well, that's interesting too, and makes
>
> perfect sense to me as a filmmaker. I think I have exactly one shot like
>
> that, and no matter how moved I am by it, I don't think I can ever use it
>
> for anything other than it itself.
>
>
>
> Maybe the resources to preserve it are not there. If so, that's sad. But
> to
> seek to diminish the work so as to justify a failing of the world is sadder
>
> still.
>
>
>
> On 3/2/10 2:07 PM, "David Baker" (address suppressed)
> C.RR.COM> wrote:
>
>
> > Myron,
>
> >
>
> > You're inquiry regarding Deren's sound recordings is
> prescient.
> > Deren's extensive field recordings in Haiti may well
> prove to be as
> > consequential
>
> > as Hugh Tracey,Alan Lomax or our own Harry Smith's
> contribution to
> > ethnomusicology.
>
> >
>
> > The "Unedited Footage" stands as a work of art silently
> however.
> >
>
> > DB
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > On Mar 2, 2010, at 12:15 PM, Myron Ort wrote:
>
> >
>
> >> Good points Chuck.
>
> >>
>
> >> Harold Courlander published his "Haiti Singing" in
> 1939. He also
> >> collected music some of which appears on early
> Folkways LPs. Life
> >> Magazine photographer Earl Leaf published "Isles Of
> Rhythm" in 1948,
> >> his travels obviously predate this.
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >> "...Courlander took his first field trip to Haiti,
> inspired by the
> >> writings of William Buehler Seabrook. In 1939, he
> published his
> >> first book about Haitian life entitled Haiti Singing.
> Over the next
> >> 30 years, he traveled to Haiti more than 20 times. His
> research
> >> focused on religious practices, African retentions,
> oral traditions,
> >> folklore, music, and dance. His book, The Drum and the
> Hoe: Life and
> >> Lore of the Haitian People, published in 1960, became
> a classic text
> >> for the study of Haitian culture."
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >> Myron Ort
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >> On Mar 2, 2010, at 8:44 AM, Chuck Kleinhans wrote:
>
> >>
>
> >>>
>
> >>> On Feb 24, 2010, at 12:13 PM, David Baker wrote:
>
> >>>>
>
> >>>> I would argue there has never been a better time to
>
> >>>> bring Deren's Haitian vision to bear on the here and
> now.
> >>>> She witnessed with her camera cultural practices
> that have never
> >>>> been documented before or since,the Living Gods
>
> >>>> and ancestors of Haiti made manifest through her
> lens .
> >>>
>
> >>> For the record and hopefully to short-circuit more
> legend making:
> >>>
>
> >>> Voudoun cultural practices in fact were witnessed,
> documented, and
> >>> "made manifest" well before Deren arrived in Haiti
> for the first
> >>> time. The African American dancer and choreographer
> Katherine
> >>> Dunham travelled to the Caribbean in 1935-36 for
> research in Haiti
> >>> for research for her M.A. thesis in anthropology at
> the University
> >>> of Chicago: "Dances of Haiti, Their Social
> Organization,
> >>> Classification, Form and Function" (1937). Dunham
> took photos and
> >>> shot some film of the dances. The thesis was
> eventually published
> >>> in English, Spanish, and French.
>
> >>>
>
> >>> And African American writer and folklorist Zora Neale
> Hurston also
> >>> travelled to Jamaica and Haiti in 1937 and after
> living in Haiti
> >>> for a year published her book of Haitian Voudoun
> stories, Tell My
> >>> Horse, and also Life in Haiti in 1938.
>
> >>>
>
> >>> Deren, of course, knew of Dunham's work since Deren
> was her
> >>> personal secretary and assistant for 9 months,
> starting in Spring
> >>> 1941. In 1947 Deren made her first trip to Haiti.
> But when she
> >>> published her book, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods
> of Haiti in
> >>> 1953, she chose to not mention Dunham or Dunham's
> thesis, and also
> >>> did not mention Hurston's work. Indeed, she left
> them out of her
> >>> bibliography in the book and in her introduction
> misleadingly
> >>> claims that in 1947 "there was virtually no precedent
> for the
> >>> filming of ceremonies".
>
> >>>
>
> >>>
>
> >>>> Make no mistake Deren's unedited footage is one of
> the most
> >>>> important cultural documents
>
> >>>> by one of the most consequential practitioners in
> the history of
> >>>> experimental film,
>
> >>>> as gender specific as it is emphatically black in
> its cultural
> >>>> perspective.
>
> >>>
>
> >>> Precisely how Deren's unedited footage (of which
> David Baker says
> >>> he's seen only about 45 minutes) is "gender specific"
> and
> >>> "emphatically black" remains to be explained.
>
> >>>
>
> >>> Is Deren's footage somehow more "gender specific" and
> "emphatically
> >>> black" than Dunham's? Dunham included some of her
> film footage in
> >>> concert dances she choreographed and performed.
>
> >>>
>
> >>> He also claims that the "entire 'unedited footage'
> may in fact be
> >>> the only legitimate FORM this film can take" which
> puts aside the
> >>> audio recordings Deren made, some of which can be
> heard on the Ito
> >>> edit of the footage as Divine Horsemen. Since the
> Voundoun dances
> >>> are done to music, how is silent footage of the
> ceremonies
> >>> regarded? Since Deren apparently did not shoot synch
> sound in
> >>> Haiti, how should we understand this form?
>
> >>>
>
> >>> If the unedited footage is 'the only legitimate FORM"
> what should
> >>> we make of the fact that Deren appeared on Canadian
> CBC televiison,
> >>> and the US CBS TV show Vanity Fair in 1950 with her
> Haitian
> >>> footage. She also made a proposal for a film on
> Voudoun for the TV
> >>> series Omnibus which was never made.
>
> >>>
>
> >>> Chuck Kleinhans
>
> >>>
>
> >>>
>
> >>>
> __________________________________________________________________
> >>> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at (address suppressed)
> om>.
> >>>
>
> >>>
>
> >>
>
> >>
> __________________________________________________________________
> >> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at (address suppressed)
> om>.
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
> __________________________________________________________________
> > For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at (address suppressed)
> om>.
> >
>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
>
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at (address suppressed)
> om>.
>
>
>
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.