- After divorcing Hammid, Deren began making trips to Haiti. She observed and filmed Voudoun rituals and dance. In 1951, she began a relationship with a 15-year-old Japanese musician, Teiji Ito. Deren was 43 and became both mentor and lover to Ito and they lived in New York and traveled to Haiti, filming various Haitian Voudoun rituals over the next few years. She became very involved in the religion of Voudoun, including hosting regular dance rituals in her apartment as well as performing a Voudoun ritual at the marriage of dancer/actor Geoffrey Holder. Her final film, The Very Eye of Night, was completed in 1955 but due to financial problems, it was delayed. Deren allegedly blamed this on her backer, lyricist John La Touche, and it was rumored that she then put a Voudoun curse on him. This speculation came about after LaTouche died within a year from a heart attack at only 38. The premiere did finally occur in 1959 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the soundtrack was by Teiji Ito.
- In 1960, she married longtime lover Teiji Ito and the next year, they traveled to New England, where Ito was to claim an inheritance following the death of his father. However, Ito's family tried to block the claim, and when Deren found out, she became apoplectic and had a stroke. She lapsed into a coma and died two weeks later, on Friday, October 13, 1961. Some believe she was the victim of a counter-curse placed on her by friends of John La Touche, but a possible contributing factor could have been "vitamin shots" that Deren had been receiving, which contained amphetamines.
- In 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award to honor independent film and video artists.
- She was cremated and her husband, Teiji Ito, scattered her ashes on the slopes of Mt. Fuji in Japan.
- By the time Deren had finished filming in Haiti in the early 1950's, she had shot more than 18,000 feet of film but never completed the editing. In the 1980's, the unedited Haitian footage was completed by Teiji Ito and his new wife, Cherel Ito. With a soundtrack by Ito, the completed footage became Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1993), released in 1985, the same year the American Film Institute established the Maya Deren Award for independent filmmaking.
- Biography: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945," pp. 222-226. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
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