The American Film Institute Award for Independent Film and Video Artists, subtitled and generally known as the Maya Deren Award, was an award presented to filmmakers and video artists by the

American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leade ...

to honor independent filmmaking. Named for the avant-garde experimental film artist

Maya Deren Maya Deren (born Eleonora Derenkowska, uk, Елеоно́ра Деренко́вська, links=no;

, it was given from 1986 through 1996.

History

Created by the

in 1985, the Maya Deren Award was first presented on January 30, 1986, at the Tower Gallery in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The inaugural recipients were video artist

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...

, experimental filmmaker

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a large ...

and animator

Sally Cruikshank Sarah Cruikshank (born 1949) is an American cartoonist, animator and artist, whose work includes animation for the Children's Television Workshop program ''Sesame Street'', and whose short ''Quasi at the Quackadero'' (1975) was inducted into the U ...

. The initial co-chairpersons of the AFI's committee for the award were two board members, actress

Marsha Mason Marsha Mason (born April 3, 1942) is an American actress and director. She has been nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Actress: for her performances in ''Cinderella Liberty'' (1973), ''The Goodbye Girl'' (1977), '' Chapter Two'' ...

and independent film exhibitor Karen Cooper. The award included a $5,000 honorarium.

Recipients

*1986:

. Presented January 30, 1986. *1987:

Dara Birnbaum Dara Birnbaum (born 1946) is an American video and installation artist. Birnbaum entered the nascent field of video art in the mid-to-late 1970s challenging the gendered biases of the period and television’s ever-growing presence within the Amer ...

Robert Breer Robert Carlton Breer (September 30, 1926 – August 11, 2011) was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor. Life and career "A founding member of the American avant-garde," Breer was best known for his films, which combine ...

Ed Emshwiller Edmund Alexander Emshwiller (February 16, 1925 – July 27, 1990) was an American visual artist notable for his science fiction illustrations and his pioneering experimental films. He usually signed his illustrations as Emsh but sometimes used E ...

*1988:

Bruce Conner Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. Biography Bruce Conner was born November 18, 1933 in McPherson, Kansas.His well- ...

Yvonne Rainer Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental.

Bill Viola Bill Viola ( , ; born 1951) is an American contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, d ...

. Presented February 3, 1988. :::Citation given to

J. Hoberman James Lewis Hoberman (born March 14, 1949) is an American film critic, journalist, author and academic. He began working at ''The Village Voice'' in the 1970s, became a full-time staff writer in 1983, and was the newspaper's senior film critic ...

, film critic for ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...

'', for contributions to independent film and video. *1989:

James Broughton James Broughton (November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999) was an American poet and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a precursor to the Beat poets. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries, as well as a member of ...

Shirley Clarke Shirley Clarke (née Brimberg; October 2, 1919 – September 23, 1997) was an American filmmaker. Life Born Shirley Brimberg in New York City, she was the daughter of a Polish-immigrant father who made his fortune in manufacturing. Her mother w ...

Joan Jonas Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Les Blank Les Blank (November 27, 1935 – April 7, 2013) was an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians. Life and career Leslie Harrod Blank Jr. was born November 27, 1935 in Tampa, Florida. He atten ...

Ernie Gehr Ernie Gehr (born 1941)Manohla Dargis ''The New York Times'', November 11, 2011. Retrieved 2013-05-27. is an American experimental filmmaker closely associated with the Structural film movement of the 1970s. A self-taught artist, Gehr was inspired ...

, Edin Velez *1991:

Bruce Baillie Bruce Baillie (September 24, 1931 – April 10, 2020) was an American experimental filmmaker. He was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1931 and died on April 10, 2020 in Camano Island, Washington. Work Baillie founded Canyon Cinema in San Francis ...

, Charles Burnett, Trinh T. Minh-ha. Presented at the

Angelika Film Center Angelika Film Center is a movie theater chain in the United States that features independent and foreign films. It operates theaters in New York City, Texas, Washington, D.C., California and Virginia. Its headquarters are in New York City. Histor ...

. *1992:

George Kuchar George Kuchar (August 31, 1942 – September 6, 2011) was an American underground film director and video artist, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic. Early life and career Kuchar trained as a commercial artist at the School of Industrial Art, now kn ...

Marlon Riggs Marlon Troy Riggs (February 3, 1957 – April 5, 1994) was a Black gay filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films, including ''Ethnic Notions'', '' Tongues Untied'', ''Color Adjustment'', ...

Steina Vasulka Steina Vasulka (born Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir in 1940)
Soros Center for Contemporary Arts Budapest and Woody Vasul ...

*1993:

Julie Dash Julie Ethel Dash (born October 22, 1952) is an American film director, writer and producer. Dash received her MFA in 1985 at the UCLA Film School and is one of the graduates and filmmakers known as the L.A. Rebellion. The L.A. Rebellion refers ...

Pat O'Neill Pat O'Neill may refer to: Sportspeople * Pat O'Neill (American football) (born 1971), American football player *Pat O'Neill (Dublin footballer) (born 1950), Dublin Gaelic footballer and manager *Pat O'Neill (Galway footballer) (born 1956), Galway G ...

Bruce The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been a ...

and Norman Yonemoto *1994:

Ken Jacobs Ken Jacobs (born May 25, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American experimental filmmaker. His style often involves the use of found footage which he edits and manipulates. He has also directed films using his own footage. Ken Jacobs directed ...

Barbara Kopple Barbara Kopple (born July 30, 1946) is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work. She has won two Academy Awards, the first in 1977 for ''Harlan County, USA'', about a Kentucky miners' strike, /sup> and the second in ...

, Julie Zando *1995:

Richard Leacock Richard Leacock (18 July 192123 March 2011)
The Telegraph (Lon ...

Victor Masayesva,

Shigeko Kubota (2 August 1937 – 23 July 2015) was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it ...

*1996:

Kenneth Anger Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost 40 works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped ...

, Leslie Thornton,

Chick Strand Mildred "Chick" Strand (December 3, 1931 – July 11, 2009) was an American experimental filmmaker, "a pioneer in blending avant-garde techniques with documentary".Diana Burgess Fuller, Daniela Salvioni, ''Art/Women/California 1950-2000: Paralle ...

Underground Film History: AFI’s Maya Deren Award, Underground Film Journal
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References

{{Maya Deren, state=collapsed American film awards Experimental film American Film Institute Awards established in 1986 Awards disestablished in 1996