Divine Horsemen essays

Divine Horsemen essays After viewing Maya Derens film Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, it is clear that Deren is depicting the beauty and power of the Haitian Voodoo ceremonies. We are able to experience this through narration explaining the different ceremonies, her focus on music of the ceremony, dance and her cinematography techniques giving you a better understanding of this practice. Any false perceptions that we have had about this mysterious religion in this traditional society she clearly clarifies. In American culture there are many false perceptions on the sociality of religion in other societies, the mere word conjures images of doll stuck with pins, evil zombies. This film completely shows that this way of life is exaggerated in Hollywood films. An example of a fiction film is The Serpent and the Rainbow. An anthropologist in the film goes to Haiti in search of a magic powder that will heal and make the dead walk. In his search he witnesses strange and bizarre incidents such as walking zombies, curses, live burial. Deren shows us the positive motivation behind the several ceremonies and the narration definitely helps understand that ceremonies are a way of communicating with the divine through several spirits or what they call Loa. In the film she shows a ceremony where a man dressed in white that is dancing to the drums being played by another man is surrounded by other persons who are singing. He then starts to gyrate as if he was having an epileptic seizure, swinging his hands and the camera continues to do a close-up on him to the point where you see how his eyes looked, as if something had hypnotized him or he was being controlled by a spirit. This was the ceremony for the Loa Legba. The narration explains that Legba is the god of the crossroads and is very important to the Haitians as he is given the ultimate respect that is displayed when the people all move back and give him space so that he can bring...