A Year in Reading: Brontez Purnell

Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film by Maya Deren
Whenever people ask me “what’s it like being high as fuck on ketamine” I’m always like “it’s like being trapped in a Maya Deren movie”–IM NOT KIDDING. She was a Ukrainian-born dancer, and filmmaker and was also the personal secretary of world-famous mother of Black American dance Katherine Dunham herself (see book down below). In a move that pissed Dunham off, she got access to her contacts in Haiti and made her pivotal film and book “Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti.” And as if she wasn’t bad ass enough, Deren is also the mother of American experimental film–“I MAKE MY PICTURES FOR WHAT HOLLYWOOD SPENDS ON LIPSTICK” she said.  In these texts she defines all her craft, philosophy, list of grievances and as they said in the 40’s (when most of this was written) “the straight dick” behind independent film making–“Your mistakes will not get you fired”. TOU-MUTHAFUKIN’-CHÉ.  

by SO once again we taking classes together at the Dunham school that like melt my heart every time). What we know to be fact: Eartha got fired in Paris for sleeping with some of Ms. Dunham’s lovers. Stranded in Paris, she began a nightclub act and so was the transmogrification of Eartha Mae Keith into EARTHA KITT.  You could say Eartha was on one but in actuality she was on a COUPLE; she moved to Europe and had a baby by a white man to secure the bag, she also got profiled by the FBI, cussed out the President’s wife and a bunch of Karens at a Ladies’ Luncheon at the White House (effectively getting her career banned in the States for decades) and also, SHE WAS THE FIRST BLACK CATWOMAN. She was from that classic era where like an abused farm girl could one day wake up a global sensation. It’s by far one of the most compelling true-life Cinderella stories.