Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

Maya Deren – 1985 – USA

Unique and fascinating documentary comprised of footage taken by pioneering underground filmmaker Maya Deren in 1951.  One of her last projects, it was uncompleted at her death and only 34 years later was her film edited into a feature-length release.  Admirably, the producers did not wrap Deren’s footage in the context of the mid-80s looking back but basically left it alone and let it speak for itself; (though there is a new narration).  What we have is an unvarnished, sometimes profound and sometimes frightening look into authentic rites of the voodoo religion of Haiti.  Deren’s camera gazes without judgment as priestesses and worshippers endlessly dance to tribal drums amid almost nonstop butchery of animals, including goats but mostly chickens, (which don’t fare any better here than they do in Herzog’s, Waters’ and Peckinpah’s films).  Some of the film is so grisly that one wonders if it even could have been distributed in the early 50; let alone find much of a sympathetic audience in these politically correct times.  Nevertheless, it stands as a refreshingly honest and apolitical document of a culture that is rarely portrayed in any films without sensationalism.