Month: April 2019

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San Francisco Silent Film Festival, May 1-5, 2019

 

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is back, running from May 1-5, at the Castro Theatre!

This year’s lineup includes The Oyster Princess/Die Austernprinzessin (1919), The Home Maker (1925), Opium (1919), Husbands and Lovers (1924), Japanese Girls at the Harbor/Minato no nihon musume (1933), and much, much more!

 Ossi Oswalda in The Oyster Princess (1919).

“This year’s program features 25 programs (including an illustrated lecture presentation at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley), all with live musical accompaniment! There are films from ten different countries— Bali, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Sweden, US, and the USSR—and more than 40 brilliant musicians from around the world to accompany!”

For the full schedule and more information, click here!

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Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché Opens at New York’s IFC Center on April 26, 2019!

 

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, directed by Pamela B. Green, opens at New York’s IFC Center on Friday, April 26, 2019!

“Alice Guy-Blaché was a true pioneer who got into the movie business at the very beginning – in 1894, at the age of 21. Two years later, she was made head of production at Gaumont and started directing films. She and her husband moved to the United States, and she founded her own company, Solax, in 1910 – they started in Flushing and moved to a bigger facility in Fort Lee, New Jersey. But by 1919, Guy-Blaché’s career came to an abrupt end, and she and the 1,000 films that bore her name were largely forgotten.

Pamela B. Green’s energetic film is both a tribute and a detective story, tracing the circumstances by which this extraordinary artist faded from memory and the path toward her reclamation. Narration by Jodie Foster. — New York Film Festival.”

For more information, click here.

To keep track of domestic and international screenings of Be Natural, visit the film’s website.

Trailer for Be Natural

Recent press:

“‘Be Natural’ Review: Rescuing Alice Guy Blaché, a Film Pioneer, From Oblivion” (NY Times)

“A Century Late, a Giant of Early Cinema Gets Her Closeup” (NY Times)

 

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Denver Silent Film Festival, April 26-28, 2019

 

The Denver Silent Film Festival is back! Running from April 26-28, 2019, the festival lineup includes a discussion with Amy Heller and Dennis Doros of Milestone Films and screenings of Blackmail (1929), Shiraz (1928), Within Our Gates (1920), Dragnet Girl (1933), and more!

Shiraz: A Romance of India (1928)

“The Denver Silent Film Festival was established in September of 2010. The Denver Silent Film Festival presents a broad spectrum of silent film by programming a lively and thought-provoking mix of educational and entertaining films. American and foreign classics, as well as lesser-known rare and restored films will be presented.”

For more information, visit the festival’s website or Facebook page.

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Feminist Media Histories special issue on Sex and the Materiality of Adult Media is now out!

 

The Spring 2019 issue of Feminist Media Histories is now out! This issue, guest edited by Elena Gorfinkel, focuses on sex and the materiality of adult media.

From the Editor’s Introduction:

“This issue’s contributions bring together approaches that expand and complicate distinctions between high and low forms, commercial porn industries and independent productions, and queer and straight sex media, contesting the purisms of what can count as cinema, art, and value by instead foregrounding the materiality of the sex film. They suggest that we must contend with how sexual representations—across practices, communities, publics, and counter-publics—have always revealed adult media to be vexed sites of materiality.”

For the full table of contents, click here. 

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Women Film Pioneers Symposium, Milwaukee, WI, April 19, 2019

 

Curated by WFPP contributor Tami Williams, the Women Film Pioneers Symposium will take place at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on April 19, 2019!

Speakers include WFPP contributors Maggie Hennefeld, Shelley Stamp, and Jennifer M. Bean, as well as WFPP founder Jane Gaines. 

“Film and media scholars have long been interested in questions of gender equity and representation, from theorizing gender to restoring the historical contributions of women as subjects, producers, and spectators. In recent years this work has been facilitated by a return to the archives and their material sources: from newspaper clippings and correspondence to production files and film prints.

As this research has revealed, women’s participation in the first decades of cinema was much more extensive than previously thought. Not only as colorists, camera operators, and exhibitors, but also as screenwriters, directors, and producers, women played an integral role in the early artistic development of the medium, bringing unique viewpoints and an imaginative exploration of crucial topics of the time, many of which remain surprisingly relevant today. The Women Film Pioneers Symposium brings four leading early cinema scholars together to explore questions of historiography, archival research, and affect.”

For more information on the symposium speakers and the companion film screenings, click here. 

 

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