A nice little blurb on Maya Deren’s work and the reissue of her audio recordings, as well as the entirety of the documentary Divine Horsemen, which contains a lot of her video recordings and reflects the scholarship of her book by the same name.
When people want to re-imagine Vodou out of context or wonder why lineage is important, the documentary at this link is why. This footage was shot about 70 years ago, give or take a few years, and the religion is still practiced in the same way, down to details present in this video. Things shown here are done the same way still, the same songs and prayers said, and spirits coming down in similar ways. Most of the people in the video have probably passed to Ginen, but their children and their children’s children still do things and teach things the same way.
It should be noted that not all of the narration is on point, and some of it is pretty dated in it’s descriptions and reflects the bias of the narrator and of Western culture at the time.
Sights and sounds of Haitian vodou
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