Maya Deren (b. Kiev, 1917 – New York, 1961) was an experimental filmmakers and promoter of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer. She used the camera, as she envisioned medieval witches and magicians did, ‘defy’ time and space through the disappearance and reappearance of objects.