Haiti
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A country in the Caribbean.
Haiti & Voodoo
The Guggenheim grant enabled Maya Deren to finance travel to Haiti to pursue her interest in voodoo. Katherine Dunham wrote her master’s thesis on Haitian dances in 1936, which may have influenced Deren’s interest. In Haiti, Deren not only filmed many hours of voodoo ritual, but also participated in them, and adopted the religion. Her book, Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti (1953), is considered a definitive source on the subject. However, the accompanying documentary remained incomplete in her lifetime and was edited and produced by Teiji Ito and his wife Cherel Winett Ito (1947-1999) in 1981, twenty years after Deren's death. All of the original film, wire recordings, and notes are held in the Maya Deren Collection at Boston University.
