Editing Maya Deren (section)

==Personal life==
In 1943, she moved to a bungalow on Kings Road in Hollywood<ref name="Legend" /> and adopted the name Maya, a pet name her second husband Hammid coined. Maya is the name of the mother of the historical [[Gautama Buddha|Buddha]] as well as the [[dharmic]] concept of the illusory nature of reality. In Greek myth, [[Maia (mythology)|Maia]] is the mother of [[Hermes]] and a goddess of mountains and fields.

In 1944, back in New York City, her social circle included [[Marcel Duchamp]], [[André Breton]], [[John Cage]], and [[Anaïs Nin]].<ref name="bauer2">{{Cite book |last=Bauer |first=Laura L. S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZdB5DwAAQBAJ |title=Hollywood Heroines: The Most Influential Women in Film History |date=2018 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-4408-3649-7 |pages=109–110 |access-date=February 29, 2020 |via=GoogleBooks}}</ref> In 1944, Deren filmed ''[[The Witch's Cradle]]'' in [[Peggy Guggenheim]]'s [[Art of This Century gallery]] with Duchamp featured in the film.

In the December 1946 issue of ''Esquire'' magazine, a caption for her photograph teased that she "experiments with motion pictures of the subconscious, but here is finite evidence that the lady herself is infinitely photogenic."<ref name="persona2">{{cite journal |last=Pramaggiore |first=Maria |date=Winter 1997 |title=Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren |url=http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/11877/1/MP_Performance_1997.pdf |journal=Cinema Journal |publisher=[[University of Texas Press]] |volume=36 |pages=17–40 |doi=10.2307/1225773 |jstor=1225773 |s2cid=191363914 |number=2}}</ref> Her third husband, [[Teiji Itō]], said: "Maya was always a Russian. In [[Haiti]] she was a Russian. She was always dressed up, talking, speaking many languages and being a Russian."<ref name="persona2" />