Maya Peters and Anahita von Andrian are up-and-coming film creators at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Their joint mission - to bend your mind through moving paintings that blur the lines between reality and imagination. Their debut work on Glass, “Echo of the Maddened Marionette, “ will be put up for auction on Wednesday, September 1 at 4 PM EST.

Strung up by the invisible strings of deadly perfectionism, our marionette is left stuck in a broken timeline. “Echo Of The Maddened Marionette” delves into the psyche of a crazed ballerina, unveiling what lurks beneath her poised and elegant facade. The marionette constantly battles between her ideal self and the toll it takes to get there. This piece erases the borders between the opposing dimensions of her mental state.

Maya’s Story

I want to make NFT art fit for the Louvre.

London-born Maya Peters is a young, up and coming, Irish-Indonesian filmmaker. Focused on blurring the lines between reality and imagination, she is an avid enthusiast of the visually spectacular.

The Come Up

Growing up alone as an only child with a single dad, Maya was left to play with her imagination. She spent most of her time creating and developing her own make-believe worlds to fill the empty space and distract her from familial absence.

Living at home wasn't easy. With her father unemployed and incapacitated, she picked up odd jobs like comic bookmaking, waitressing, commercial, and film acting to put food on the table. Never a day without hard work, being a multitasker and committing to versatility was and still is a key to her survival.

Using her skills and grit to push her artistic career further, she’s worked with Academy Award-winning director Anders Walter and AcademyFilms directors Si & Ad. She is on the board of judges for HER International Film Festival and Chroma International Film Festival. To connect with her local community, she has also appeared in The Irish Independent and RTÉ for her acting and modeling work.

No Regrets

"Look, I've never had a dream in my life

Because a dream is what you wanna do, but still haven't pursued

I knew what I wanted and did it till it was done

So I've been the dream that I wanted to be since day one!"

- “No Regrets” by Aesop Rock

Despite the hustle, she knew she had to reach further and learned to support herself through her art internationally. She received a scholarship to study in UWC Changshu, China, at age 17 and promptly moved to China. There she began to polish her craft free from home and financial burden.

China brought forth new memories, new opportunities, and new eyes. Using her background knowledge in acting and photography, she began directing her own films with kids from all around the world. Her first film, ‘Wo Ai Ni Mama,’ about a young Chinese girl exploring her sexuality, based on her own experiences in embracing her bisexuality, received awards across the globe and received commercial distribution in China and Portugal.

It has also been praised by well-known film critic João Lopez, in Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias and got her two scholarships to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to study film.

Bridging Two Worlds

Consider an estuary for a long moment. Imagine the rush of moving water pushing against the glittering banks of the Ural River. Following its snaking bends, as it struggles along the rocky terrain of sweet European mountains before gently depositing into warmer, damper, and greener Asian marshes. Just as this complex torrent bridges two worlds, I live as the estuary where white blood meets brown.

As a mixed kid and a girl of seemingly many in-betweens, totality has never been the forefront of anything Maya stands for. In China, she started observing her own culture and how the culture of others was woven into the fabric of their lives.

Being an “in-between” makes me used to wriggling, fighting, and confronting the idea of totality from the people that have tried to box me in at all sides.

Her fascination for culture also weaves itself into her art. Tracing back to her complex multicultural roots, her work aims to explore and shine a light on moments of tension. Between realities. Between identities. Between perspectives. Through her art, she wants the viewer to accept multifaceted truths of life.

Hita’s Story

I want to challenge the NFT art world with enticing experimental storytelling visuals that explore the human psyche inside and out.

Boston-born, Anahita von Andrian-Werburg is a promising young German-Iranian filmmaker. Focused on influencing perceptions to bring awareness through her punchy multimedia photography & videography work, she hopes to bridge the gap between reality and imagination with her fluid approach to storytelling.

The Come Up

Anahita was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. As a multi-ethnic and third-culture child with family spread out across much of the globe, she was fortunate to see much of the world at a young age. Language and culture fascinated her wherever she adventured. She is quadrilingual in German, Farsi, English, and French. She aspires to channel her experiences into the vital storytelling required to preserve the complexities and tensions within and between different cultures and perspectives.

Throughout her tween years, she attended a British international school until she was accepted into a rigorously academic preparatory all-girls high school in Boston. At age 16, she left home and moved abroad to live with her 80-year-old grandmother, an avid paintress, in Munich, where she attended a local German public school. From Shiraz's colorful, bustling bazaars to the steady flow of Munich’s Isar river paradise, Anahita matured her appreciation for color, sound, and movement, elements now omnipresent in her visual work.

Venture into Film

Anahita’s diverse mosaic of experiences and images left her yearning for a method of preservation and appreciation. She turned to writing, photography, and videography as her chosen method of documentation.

Despite the lack of opportunity for any formal education in filmmaking, she was not deterred. In-between participating in competitive sports and rigorous academics, she spent most of her free time researching filmmaking and shooting as much content as possible. Her hard work paid off. At 15, she launched her freelance videography and photography business and has since worked with an international selection of brands, companies, organizations, and individuals.

Documenting Realities

Anahita was selected as one of three finalists out of an international pool of over 800+ female applicants to join the Beautiful Destinations Creative Agency in NYC as a Capture Your Creativity Campaign creator. She would later direct, co-film, produce, and edit, The Urban Wave, a short Beautiful Destinations film centered around Munich’s urban surf culture and how it ties into Munich as a travel destination.

She expanded her love for music through her work with Live Nation Entertainment, where she shot, edited, and produced content on behalf of Live Nation Boston venues for musical artists such as Mason Ramsey and the Beach Fossils.

Her activism continued in her videography work for youth Climate Activism groups in Munich, where she spearheaded the media sector for the Friday’s For Future Student-Lead Climate Justice protests, and in Boston, where she was a creative lead for the Boston Youth Climate Strike, and the national motion graphics co-director for the US Youth Climate Strike.

She is currently spearheading a profile film series for Voice In Sport, the first independent community-based platform for young female athletes, as an intern on their creative team.

Her multidisciplinary approach to photography, with pieces primarily concerned with mental health, won her multiple Scholastic Arts awards, honors in curated galleries, and selection for VSCO Select’s contemporary publications.

Journey to the Metaverse

Anahita (director) and Maya (creative art director) most recently collaborated on the creative ad campaign for MUZE Music Inc, an up-and-coming live music performance booking platform on Zoom. Just as the platform merges the physical and digital world for performers, their campaign did the same. Mind-bending lighting, out-of-the-box subject styling with UV makeup, and elaborate transitions made the campaign unique.

Both Maya and Anahita are currently second-year students at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Studying and living in New York doesn’t come without a heavy price tag. Without concrete financial support, they are forced to create work with certain limitations.

NFT’s give the duo a fighting chance to fuel their creative minds and are a gateway to helping them break down the barriers between physical and digital art, ultimately bridging two worlds and becoming significant players in the new economy for digital art.

Maya and Anahita are here to grind and aim to continue doing work that shatters the boundaries of what is imaginable and unexpected. They want to give their audiences a complete mind-fuck sensory experience, challenging and contradicting viewers' comfortability with their existence, leaving them restless and wanting more.

On the horizon, Maya is working on a piece that explores how corporal movement can contribute to experimental narratives in a childhood mindscape. She sees herself becoming an artist who uses unusual forms of expression in her films to disrupt the rules of commercial narratives.

Anahita has plans to develop her affinity for aesthetics and awareness-centered storytelling as an aspiring screenwriter, cinematographer, and director. She is currently pioneering a series of short pieces to show the stories behind the successes of some of the US’s top female athletes.

Essentially, they are a dream team.

So watch out. Together, this duo is gonna play with your mind, play with your emotions and make you question what's real, forever preserved in the blockchain. Stay tuned for their debut NFT video on Glass - “Echo of the Maddened Marionette” - on Wednesday, September 1 at 4 PM EST.