This book is a thorough review of Maya Deren's total oeuvre, offering a study of one of our most important filmmakers who has been more overlooked than one might expect. Further study of Deren from a distinct point of view, as Keller offers, is a vital contribution.
Bill Nichols, film critic and editor of Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde Keller's truly excellent book considers both Deren's theoretical writings and cinematic work and places them within the context of her life and the difficulties she faced as an experimental artist (frequently unfunded and living on the edge). This volume fills a gap in scholarship on Deren with clear and elegant writing.
Lucy Fischer, University of Pittsburgh Maya Deren: Incomplete Control is a tour de force of historical and critical scholarship that explores new primary research material from Maya Deren's voluminous and complex archive to assert the significance of incompletion and process as central to Deren's artistic and intellectual production. Keller's clear, erudite prose offers brilliant new readings of Deren's extant films, including canonical works like Meshes of the Afternoon, and comprehensively explores Deren's incomplete projects-films, research projects, writings-to draw out Deren's radical imaginings of art and culture.
Michael Zryd, York University A required resource for serious examination of Deren's groundbreaking films... Keller's smoothly organized, cleanly written text is perhaps the most comprehensive single volume on Deren's work... Essential. Choice A must-read for scholars of experimental cinema, women filmmakers, and Maya Deren. Film Criticism