Abstract:

Abstract The article presents various strategies undertaken by researchers studying biographies, focusing mainly on filmmakers. It analyses different techniques adopted by the authors of publications on the biography of the avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, showing how the artist’s biography is approached using various theoretical frameworks. The study cites specific publications on her life, giving an idea of how different problem categories form the theoretical core for considering Deren’s work. The most important of them are: the identity conflict stemming from her emigration to the United States and her Ukrainian-Jewish origin, the role of a woman in the patriarchal world, and the context of forming an avant-garde trend. The discussion of the relationship between biographical work and cinema studies reflects on the specificity of exploring film sources from the biographical point of view, especially interesting in the case of avant-garde cinema. The article also presents selected aspects of the artist’s life, which become a source of interpretations of her artistic works, and reflects on the potential to reveal unknown information about the artist through the analysis of the visual material, which is more complex than the other sources (especially written ones).

Keywords: