Women Film Pioneers Project

Women Film Pioneers Project The Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP) is a digital publication and resource that advances research on the hundreds of women who worked behind the scenes during the silent film era.
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WFPP features short career profiles on single individuals, longer thematic peer-reviewed overview essays, and shorter multimedia posts, all by film scholars, film curators, archivists, and historians. In our published profiles, we cover women who worked in national cinemas across six of the seven continents. This project began as a search for “women film pioneers” who challenged the established idea of the great “fathers” of cinema. Since researchers found more women than anyone expected to find, one principle came to organize the project: What we assume never existed is what we invariably find. Today, the goals of WFPP are to jumpstart historical research on the work of women filmmakers from the early years of cinema through the coming of sound; to facilitate cross-national connections between researchers; and to reconfigure world film knowledge by foregrounding the fact that women worked in many capacities behind the scenes on a global scale. Always expanding, WFPP is published in partnership with Columbia University Libraries, with support from Columbia University, School of the Arts, Film Program.

A handful of Frances Marion films are coming to the Criterion Channel in May!"For almost three decades, Frances Marion w...
04/30/2020
The Criterion Channel’s May 2020 Lineup

A handful of Frances Marion films are coming to the Criterion Channel in May!

"For almost three decades, Frances Marion was Hollywood’s highest-paid screenwriter (male or female), a pioneer who shaped the nascent art of script writing and whose seemingly boundless imagination yielded some of the most unforgettable words and stories ever put on screen."

Check out what’s in store next month on our streaming service!

Christine Gledhill looks back at last year's Women & The Silent Screen Conference, which was held at Eye Filmmuseum in M...
04/30/2020
Conference Report: Women & the Silent Screen, Amsterdam (May 2019)

Christine Gledhill looks back at last year's Women & The Silent Screen Conference, which was held at Eye Filmmuseum in May 2019.

Christine Gledhill looks back on last year’s Women & The Silent Screen conference held at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam in May 2019. Holed up in my attic during the current pandemic gi…

04/29/2020
Unladylike2020

The newest #unladylike2020 short film looks at Lois Weber (featuring commentary by the great Shelley Stamp)!

Can you imagine a world in which the top screenwriters are women? At the beginning of the filmmaking, over a century ago, this was the case, and Lois Weber was a leading pioneer- writing and directing over 140 films in her lifetime.

With her husband and creative partner actor Philips Smalley, Weber wrote, directed, often starred in, and edited a film every week, and was the first woman to direct a feature film. The short film also features a modern-day trailblazer in the industry today, Radha Blank, who was named one of the “10 Directors to Watch for 2020" by Variety Magazine, and won the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, making her the second black woman ever to win the award. Blank shares her experience as a director, actor, and writer, and reflects on Lois Weber's legacy, and the state of women in the film industry today.

Check out the short below to see Weber in action, with rare archival footage, original animations, and clips from the first films in history.
#UNLADYLIKE2020PBS

04/29/2020
Media History Digital Library

Media History Digital Library

We are happy to announce that our search engine, Lantern, has been relaunched with major user-experience improvements.

Thanks to the support of an ACLS Digital Extension Grant, we have been able to address the two biggest problems that users have long reported to us: missing thumbnails and inaccurate “Read in Context” landing pages.

98% of the broken links have now been repaired. You will see the thumbnails of colorful magazine pages again. You will open to the correct pages to read those articles and advertisements in context. And, as always, we will keep our service completely open access and free.

We will keep working on the last 2% of broken links. Many other enhancements are the works, too. In the meantime, happy searching.

http://lantern.mediahist.org

The Montague Reporter
04/28/2020

The Montague Reporter

The Women Film Pioneers Project aims to highlight the immense, but mostly unheard-of, contributions of women in the silent film industry between 1895 and 1925. Read all about it as Charlotte Kohlmann's "Unearthing the Archives" series goes online in our April 23 edition.
https://montaguereporter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/April-23-2020.pdf

Online Film Club on Saturday, May 2 (2pm CT): *La Souriante Mme Beudet* (Germaine Dulac, 1923) and two shorts by Alice G...
04/27/2020
Event — Online Film Club - Smiling Madame Beudet | Alliance Française de Chicago

Online Film Club on Saturday, May 2 (2pm CT): *La Souriante Mme Beudet* (Germaine Dulac, 1923) and two shorts by Alice Guy Blaché. Discussion led by Matthew Jackson and Aurore Spiers!

Saturday, May 2 at 2:00 p.m. Free admission - Donations encouraged This event is ONLINE - zoom links will be emailed following registration

Many of the pioneers included in WFPP produced their own writing and published content (film reviews, screenwriting manu...
04/27/2020

Many of the pioneers included in WFPP produced their own writing and published content (film reviews, screenwriting manuals, novels, plays, illustrations, etc.). This bibliography is an expanding space for these different types of sources, which might not otherwise be included in the career profile’s bibliography (although some appear there as well).

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/works-by-pioneers-primary-sources/

"Within just a few years, the young Yost produced an impressive number of scenarios, including those for Flames of the F...
04/25/2020
Dorothy Yost – Women Film Pioneers Project

"Within just a few years, the young Yost produced an impressive number of scenarios, including those for Flames of the Flesh (1920), Smoldering Embers (1920), and One Man in a Million (1921). She then wrote numerous scenarios and adaptations for Fox Film Corporation, such as The Hunted Woman (1925), Marriage in Transit (1925), and She Wolves (1925), reaching a high point with the financial success of Kentucky Pride (1925), a most unusual John Ford title narrated by a horse whose dialogue is in the intertitles." #bornonthisday

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-dorothy-yost/

"Despite all the controversy over The Cabbage Fairy, the film’s significance as a document of sexual history has been ne...
04/23/2020
Do You Believe in Fairies? Cabbages, Victorian Memes, and the Birth of Cinema: Seeing Sapphic Sexuality in the Silent Era – Women Film Pioneers Project

"Despite all the controversy over The Cabbage Fairy, the film’s significance as a document of sexual history has been nearly completely neglected. More specifically, the sexual imagery of The Cabbage Fairy takes part in the lesbian chic of the Belle Époque (1871-1914)."

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/2019/10/17/do-you-believe-in-fairies-cabbages-victorian-memes-and-the-birth-of-cinema-seeing-sapphic-sexuality-in-the-silent-era/

"Aili Kari made a career for herself in the early Finnish film industry, but her name is very seldom remembered or menti...
04/22/2020
Aili Kari – Women Film Pioneers Project

"Aili Kari made a career for herself in the early Finnish film industry, but her name is very seldom remembered or mentioned. During the silent era, she worked as a production secretary and as an actress at the major film company Suomi-Filmi, which had been founded in 1919 under the name of Suomen Filmikuvaamo and regularly produced fiction films." #bornonthisday

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/aili-kari/

Women Film Pioneers Project is a scholarly resource exploring women’s global involvement at all levels of film production during the silent film era.

"As a case study, Stratton-Porter's career is uniquely helpful in demonstrating how Hollywood engaged with American lite...
04/21/2020
Hollywood Regionalism

"As a case study, Stratton-Porter's career is uniquely helpful in demonstrating how Hollywood engaged with American literary regionalism. Not only did Stratton-Porter publish numerous regionalist novels, but she also participated in the filming of their adaptations. Unhappy with the way Lasky-Paramount adapted her novel Freckles (1904) to film in 1917, she left Indiana in the early 1920s for Los Angeles, where she opened a film studio that could do justice to her well-loved books."

In her sixty years on earth, Gene Stratton-Porter was many things: a women's club organizer, nature photographer, naturalist, conservationist, best-selling novelist, and a burgeoning film producer who died just as her film studio began to realize her mission of adapting her novels into movies that c...

"Her film career, between 1910 and the mid-1920s, can be divided into three periods. Between 1910 and 1916, the actress ...
04/20/2020
Fabienne Fabrèges – Women Film Pioneers Project

"Her film career, between 1910 and the mid-1920s, can be divided into three periods. Between 1910 and 1916, the actress worked in France for the Société des Établissements Gaumont. During World War I, she relocated to Italy, where she was immediately recognized as a leading actress by the Italian film industry, and, between 1916 and 1923, acted in two dozen films. In many of these films she is credited as the screenwriter, and for one of them, also as the director."

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/fabienne-fabreges/

Feminist Media Histories
04/17/2020

Feminist Media Histories

📣 Our Spring issue on MEDIA and the ENVIRONMENT is live!

Edited by Jennifer Peterson, this issue features scholarly work and conversation on "the role of women in historical representations of the environment, the gendering of nature, and the history of feminist interventions in environmental media."

https://fmh.ucpress.edu/content/6/2?current-issue=y

04/16/2020
Mixed Identities

MIXED IDENTITIES (1913), written by Eliza G. Harral, is a short comedy about twin sisters Alice and Edna. Held in the Eye Filmmuseum's collection, this title is part of our curated video gallery dedicated to unassigned US-based screenwriters: https://wfpp.columbia.edu/2020/02/03/video-gallery-unassigned-screenwriters/

Director: William Humphrey | Production Country: United States | Year: 1913 | Production Company: Vitagraph Company of America (United States) | FLM43235 | F...

"Gale Henry left Universal in 1918 and with her husband, Bruno J. Becker, started the Model Comedy Company. Their shorts...
04/15/2020
Gale Henry – Women Film Pioneers Project

"Gale Henry left Universal in 1918 and with her husband, Bruno J. Becker, started the Model Comedy Company. Their shorts were distributed by the Bulls Eye Corporation and were designed to exploit and showcase Henry’s talents." #bornonthisday

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-gale-henry/

Women Film Pioneers Project is a scholarly resource exploring women’s global involvement at all levels of film production during the silent film era.

04/14/2020
Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford

We're very excited to announce the brand-new Mary Pickford Official YouTube Channel. In the coming weeks & months, we'll be sharing clips, feature films, & behind-the-scenes videos from Mary's life.⁣⁣

Make sure to hit SUBSCRIBE and join us: https://bit.ly/2XAn2mE

04/13/2020
Unladylike2020

Don't miss the #unladylike2020PBS episode on Anna May Wong!

bit.ly/unladylike2020

We're very excited to share our next short, featuring Anna May Wong, the first Asian American female movie star.

Wong's long and varied career spanned silent and sound film, stage, radio, and television, in an era when Chinese protagonists in Hollywood movies were typically performed by white actors in yellow face. The short dives into this little-known Hollywood history, includes amazing footage from Wong's films - including one of the first films in technicolor - and shots of her trendsetting moments in fashion, along with our original animations. The short also features Tony Award-Winning Producer, Jenna Ushkowitz, best known for her role as Tina Cohen-Chang in Glee.

Especially in these times, we're honored to work on and share the stories of the persistent, courageous women in history who faced many great obstacles to break barriers and pave the way for women after them. #UNLADYLIKE2020PBS

"The historiography of silent cinema in Latin America tells a story of good fortune in the face of adversity, enterprisi...
04/10/2020
Writing the History of Latin American Women Working in the Silent Film Industry – Women Film Pioneers Project

"The historiography of silent cinema in Latin America tells a story of good fortune in the face of adversity, enterprising individuals, and collective frustrations. Until recently women were virtually absent from published histories, however; this omission from the major works in Latin American film historiography is evidence of the way in which women’s work has been made invisible in the main tradition."

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/essay/writing-the-history-of-latin-american-women-working-in-the-silent-film-industry/

New to WFPP: Eva Molcard on Soviet editor-director Elizaveta Svilova!"Her career, which spanned far beyond her collabora...
04/07/2020

New to WFPP: Eva Molcard on Soviet editor-director Elizaveta Svilova!

"Her career, which spanned far beyond her collaborations with her husband [Dziga Vertov], significantly advanced the early principles of cinematic montage."

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/elizaveta-svilova/

"Once we understand that thinking is distributed—it doesn’t just happen in the brains of individuals, but arises through...
04/06/2020
After the Facts – These Edits Are My Thoughts – Women Film Pioneers Project

"Once we understand that thinking is distributed—it doesn’t just happen in the brains of individuals, but arises through and within entangled engagements of brains, bodies, and worlds—we can look at women in early film and see that what they were doing was more than 'just helping.' Although their ideas may not be documented on paper, we can see their creative and intellectual participation in their processes." -- Karen Pearlman, "After the Facts, These Edits Are My Thoughts"

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/after-the-facts/

Women Film Pioneers Project is a scholarly resource exploring women’s global involvement at all levels of film production during the silent film era.

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Alice Howell in 3 rare silent gems on 1 DVD - Cinderella Cinders, One Wet Night, Under A Spell
Here's a promo that I did a couple of years ago for a Mabel Normand book. She deserves to be better appreciated.
Hi, I have a biographical link to Blanche Walsh, who may have been the first American movie star. I'm currently writing a book about her. Though a major star of stage, and the prototype for a movie star in Adolph Zukor's original production for Famous Players, "Resurrection" (1912)--Walsh, like many great woman of the past, has been sadly forgotten. I'm on a one-man campaign to resurrect her memory. I'd love to learn more about your group as well. https://www.facebook.com/Who-was-Blanche-Walsh-597864870661085/?modal=admin_todo_tour
Alice Howell had a hand in creating the gags in her films, I'm convinced, and possibly more.
MARION DAVIES: actress, producer, writer
Seems like this book should be on this page:
Once again Marion Davies is ignored. Davies was one of the most successful actresses of the silent era (despite the persistent legends to the contrary), She wrote the scenario for her first film (pre-Hearst) and was a film producer and businesswoman. Davies starred in 30 silent films between 1917 and 1929 and appeared in 10 Broadway productions between 1914 and 1920. She also "appeared" on radio and wrote and produced a television pilot. A recent re-examination of her work has led to two (so far) blu-ray releases (WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER and ENCHANTMENT) and DVDs from multiple sources to include SHOW PEOPLE, THE PATSY, BEAUTY'S WORTH, THE BRIDE'S PLAY, THE RED MILL, QUALITY STREET. and GETTING MARY MARRIED. Davies was a trailblazer in comedy, a screwball comedienne before the genre existed. Two of her films, KNIGHTHOOD and LITTLE OLD NEW YORK, rank among the biggest box-office hits of the silent era.
The International Different Faces Different Voices Film Festival in historic Cambridge, Massachusetts has expanded for '18 and is open for film submissions in five categories! Filmmakers may submit an original Flicks4Chicks contest short that must be made between now and April 20th. Or they may opt to submit an already completed film under one the Casting A Light categories. PLEASE NOTE: we are interested in seminal films made within the last 40 years to round out our screenings. There will be two top cash prizes for the Diversity and Beyond the Bechdel Test winners, plus many other cash and gift awards. The festival runs from June 27th - 29th. Specific guidelines for Flicks4Chicks film: - feature a woman as one of the central characters (men can be featured too!) - must have at least one woman in a creative leadership role – producer; writer; director; main actor; editor - must be based on one of the 100 loglines the festival team has created - we send them once you sign up (submit application) and YOU choose - films must be 10 minutes or under in length - films must be in English or captioned. For details and to sign up: https://filmfreeway.com/DifferentFacesDifferentVoicesFilmFestival. Please pass the word as this is time sensitive, specially for Flicks4Chicks participants.
Hi...... Good morning to Great film makers on here and Happy Christmas to you. I'm Temmy from Nigeria and I'm a Movie Director and Editor, wish to meet with the Organisers of this Great page for 2018 Advance Movie Projects and other Programs. Please let someone message me soon. Thanks
For those who love #IdaLupino as much as I do, please check out my post on the mastery of #Outrage in the midst of Hollywood sexism, the production code and the stigma of B movies, enjoy!
SLAPSTICK DIVAS ARE LOOSE. Wanted to announce that my new opus SLAPSTICK DIVAS: THE WOMEN OF SILENT COMEDY is now officially out, and the softbound as well as the hardback editions are available on Amazon.com, BearManor's website, etc. It's 663 pages, with 430 images, and over 500 silent women are covered and discussed. The softbound is $30 and the hardback $40. For some reason there's separate listings for each and here's a, link for the softbound: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1629331325/ref=sr_1_2…