After her second divorce, Maya Deren began making trips to Haiti, observing and filming Voudoun rituals and dance, and eventually becoming very involved in Voudoun herself. In 1951, she began a relationship with a 25-year-old Japanese musician, Teiji Ito. Deren was 43 and became both mentor and lover to Ito. They lived in New York and he followed her on her trips to Haiti. By the time Deren had completed filming in Haiti in the mid-1950's, she had shot more than 18,000 feet of film but never completed the editing. She died in 1961 and the unedited Haitian footage was finally edited in the 1980's by her widowed husband, Teiji Ito, and his new wife, Cherel. With a soundtrack by Ito, the completed footage was released in 1985 as this film. Later that year, the American Film Institute established the Maya Deren Award for independent film making.