Maya Deren, born Eleonora Derenkovska (Kiev, 1917 – New York, 1961), was a Ukrainian-born American director, film theorist, and choreographer, and a key figure in American avant-garde cinema. Her film career began with the short film *Meshes of the Afternoon* (1943), made in collaboration with Alexander Hammid and considered a masterpiece of surrealist cinema. This was followed by works such as *At Land* (1944), *A Study in Choreography for Camera* (1945), and *Ritual in Transfigured Time* (1946), in which she explored the relationship between body, space, and time through an oneiric, non-narrative language. Deren was also an influential theorist, promoting cinema as an art form independent of the Hollywood industry and personally distributing her films. For her pioneering work, she received major awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 1946—the first ever granted for filmmaking—and the International Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1947 for *Meshes of the Afternoon*. In her later years, she dedicated herself to the study of Haitian Vodou, documented in her book *Divine Horsemen*.