Women and the Silent Screen conference

Tsuru Aoki and her husband Sessue Hayakawa in Courageous Coward (1919)

The Fifth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference is being held at Stockholm University, Sweden, 11–13 June 2008, and a full programme with screenings has now been published. The aim of the conference is to “celebrate the diversity of women’s engagement with silent cinemas across the globe”, and it’s very interesting to see the current issues being covered by the papers and some of the unfamiliar films which are being put back on the screens in response to such new debates. This is why we have research; so we can see more.

Here’s the outline conference programme:

Wednesday, June 11

Keynote address
Jane Gaines - Women and the Cinematification of the World

11:00–12:45
Parallel Sessions 1.1
National and Transnational
Rosanna Maule - Feminist Film History and the (Un)problematic Treatment of Trans-nationalism in Early Cinema
Christine Gledhill - Mary Pickford: Emerging Stardom and Transnational Circulation
Sanjoy Saksena - Image of Women in Colonial and Post-Colonial Indian Cinema
Phil Powrie - Josephine Baker and Pierre Batcheff in La Sirène des tropiques (1927)

Sharpened Pencils
Domenico Spinosa - The didactic-instructive task of cinema (1907-1918) in the Italian women writings
Luca Mazzei - Going to movies wearing a skirt and handling a pen. Women writing about cinema 1898-1916
Luigia Annunziata - Matilde Serao and the cinema
Louis Pelletier - Ray Lewis and the Birth of Canadian Film Culture

Germaine Dulac
April Miller - Pure Cinema, Pure Violence: Murder as Avant-Garde Aesthetic in Germaine Dulac’s La Coquille et le Clergyman and La Souriante Madame Beudet
Tami M. Williams - An Invitation to a Voyage: Cross medial spatial metaphors, modes of transport and sexual liberation in the cinema of Germaine Dulac
Catherine Siberschmidt - The concept of spectatorship in Germaine Dulac’s film theory
Sarah Keller - “Optical Harmonies”: Sight and Sound in Germaine Dulac’s Integral Cinema

13:45–16:00
Parallel Sessions 1.2
Conceptualizing “Female Pioneers”
Shelley Stamp - Lois Weber’s ”Feminine Hand” at Rex
Karen Ward Mahar - Working Girls: The Masculinization of American Business in Film and Advice Literature in the 1920s
Isabel Arredondo - Forgetting Women Film Pioneers: Juliet Rublee and the Myth of the Avant-Garde
Mark Lynn Anderson - The Real Dorothy: Mrs. Wallace Reid, the Newspaper, and Feminist Film Historiography
Monica Dall’Asta - What Means to Be a Woman: Theorizing Feminist Film History Beyond the Essentialism / Constructionism Divide

Case Studies in Stardom
Tijana Mamula - Ideal Situation: Projecting Knowledge in Prix de Beauté
Miya Tokumitsu - f(Swoon): The Function of the Female Swoon in Silent Film
Nicole Beth Wallenbrock - The Hollywood Flapper dies an Expressionist Death (Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box)
Galen Wilson - Performance of Anxiety: Les Vampires and the Crisis of Gender in the Fin-de-Siecle
Hélène Fleckinger -“The wicked woman” On the character of Irma Vep in Les Vampires of Louis Feuillade

Authorship and Screenwriting
Vincent L. Barnett - The Novelist as Hollywood Star: Author Royalties and Studio Income in the 1920s
Alexis Weedon - Elinor Glyn the Author On Page and Screen
Stephan Michael Schröder - The conditions of freelance script writing – example Harriet Bloch
Claus Tieber - Between Sentimentalism and Modernity: The narrative structure of Frances Marion’s screenplays
Anke Brouwers - The Name Behind the Titles: Women, Authorship and Silent Screenwriting

Thursday, June 12

9:00–10:45
Parallel Sessions 2.1
Cross-Gender Casting and Lesbian Characters
Astrid Söderbergh Widding - Flickan i frack – A Case of Cross-Dressing
Laura Horak - Edna/Billy Foster, the Biograph “Boy”
Fiona Philip - Veiled Disclosures and ‘Speaking Back’: Borderline (1930) and the Presences of Censorship
Susan Potter - Opening up Pandora’s Box

American Stardom
Mary Desjardins - A Method to this Madness? The Myth of the Mad Silent Film Star
Charlie Keil - ’Studio Girls’: Female Stars and the Logic of Brand Names
Jeannette Delamoir - Mary Pickford and Louise Lovely: The silent motion-picture star in the age of reproduction
Tricia Welsch - From Pratfalls to Glamour: Gloria Swanson at Triangle

(Re)discovering Female Filmmakers 1
Nathalie Morris - “Alma isn’t Talking”: The Early Career of Alma Reville aka Mrs Alfred Hitchcock
Claudia Preschl and Elisabeth Streit - Making Noice (Proud to be loud). Women in the Silent-Period of Austrian Film History
Anne Bachmann - Parallel stories? Ebba Lindkvist’s brief career and the film version of a
theatrical play
Annemone Ligensa - “A Cinematography of Feminine Thought”: The Novel The Dangerous Age (1910) by Karin Michaelis and Its Filmic Adaptations

Parallel Sessions 2.2
(Re)considering Genres and “Feminine Tastes”
Lea Jacobs - On Hating Valentino: The Rejection of the Romantic Drama in the American Cinema of the 1920s
Annette Förster - Humorous reflections on acting, filmmaking and genre in comic film productions by Adriënne Solser, Musidora, and Nell Shipman
Kristen Anderson Wagner - “Ever on the Move”: Silent Comediennes and the New Woman

Fashion and Fandom
Mila Ganeva - Women between Screenwriting and Fashion Journalism: The Case of Ruth Goetz
Therése Andersson - Beauty Box – Film Stars and Beauty Culture in Early 20th Century Sweden
Andrea Haller - “Flimmeritis” and Fashion – Early intermedial practices of female movie fandom in Imperial Germany
Lisa Stead - “It costs nothing to wish!” Female Fan Writing and Self-Representation in the British Silent Cinema

(Re)discovering Female Filmmakers 2
Marcela de Souza Amaral - Alice Guy and the narrative cinema
Mike C. Vienneau - The discursive Art of Alice Guy: The cinema and the feminine silent word
Jindiška Bláhová - “The lady crazy about film” – demystifying Thea 􀀀ervenková, the mystery woman of the early Czechoslovak cinema
Micaela Veronesi - A woman wants to create the world. Umanità by Elvira Giallanella

14:00–15:45
Parallel Sessions 2.3
Stardom and Intermediality
Anne Morey - Geraldine Farrar: A Film Star from Another Medium
Victoria Duckett - A new anachronism: Sarah Bernhardt and the modern theatrical film
Elena Mosconi - The Star as an Artist: Italian Divas between Symbolism and Liberty
Maria Elena D’Amelio - Damned Queens. Two case studies on the dark ladies in Cabiria and Maciste all’inferno films

(Re)discovering Female Filmmakers 3
Begoña Soto Vázquez - How to research the exception: the power of the unknown
María Cami-Vela - Women, bullfighters and identity in Spanish Silent Cinema: Musidora
Bárbara Barroso - Virgína de Castro e Almeida: writing, producing and envisioning film
Nadi Tofighian - Isabel and José – the pioneer tandem filmmakers of the Philippines

More than Filmmakers
Anne Marit Myrstad - Film censorship, morality and female identity: Fernanda Nissen, a case study
Joshua Yumibe - The Gendering of Color and Coloring of Films: Female Film Colorists of the Silent Era
Christopher Natzén - Greta Håkansson – a female conductor in a time of change during the transition to sound film in Sweden 1928-1932
Tony Fletcher - Laura Eugenia Smith and the Biokam Films

16:15–18:00
Parallel Sessions 2.4
Film Festivals and Screening Networks
Kay Armatage - Women’s Cinema, Film Festivals and Their Contribution to Women’s Film History
Ingrid Stigsdotter and Kelly Robinson - ‘Clowning Glories’: A Case Study of a Festival Programme and its Audiences
Rebeca Ibanez-Martin and Andrea Gautier Sansalvador - Women as Archivers of Films Made by Women: the Project of Envideas

Russian Pioneers
Dunja Dogo - Re-editing History in the Works of Esfir’ I. Šub (1927-30)
Ilana Sharp - Esfir Shub’s Costructivist Non-Fiction Film and Soviet Silent Cinema
Lauri Piispa - Vera Kholodnaia: Queen of Screen, Slave of Love
Michele Torre - A woman of all trades: Zoia Barantsevich, a pioneer in early Russian cinema

Asta Nielsen
Ansje van Beusekom - Asta Nielsen in the Netherlands in 1920
Annette Brauerhoch - Between Pleasure and Pain: Asta Nielsens Acting Acts
Heide Schlüpmann - Playing History – Asta Nielsen in Early Cinema
Karola Gramann - Screening and discussion

Friday, June 13

9:00–10:45
Parallel Sessions 3.1
Three Histories, One Archive
Jennifer Horne - Premediations: Previewing for Better Motion Pictures, 1916-1930
Mark Garrett Cooper - The Universal Women: An Institutional Explanation
Richard Abel - Unexplored Margaret Herrick Library Resources, 1910-1916

Chinese Stardom
Yiman Wang - Between “Yellowface” and “Yellow Yellowface” – Anna May Wong and Her Chinese Audience during the Interwar Era
Erin Kelley – Dance, Stardom, and the Trans-National Celebrity Status of Anna May Wong
Qin Xiqing - Pearl White and the New Female Image in Chinese Silent Cinema
Yuan Chen - Wang Hanlun, a ‘successful’ Runaway Nora in Early Chinese Film Industry
Ruixue Jia - Silence can kill: rethinking Rua Ling-yu’s tradgedy

Images of Women
Constance Balides - Moralizing Typologies to Sociological Personalities: Delinquent Women in Early Social Problem Films
William Van Watson - Enrico Guazzoni’s Marcantonio and Cleopatra: The Feline-Feminine Construct and the Colonial Dangers of Heavy Petting
Selin Tüzün Gül - From stage to the screen: Actresses as one of the symbols of Turkish modernization project
Tommy Gustafsson - The Significance of the New Woman in Swedish Silent Film

11:15–13:00
Parallel Sessions 3.2
Politics of Ethnicity
Denise McKenna - What Happened to Myrtle? Latina Stars in Early Hollywood
Ora Gelley - Race and Gender in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915): Patterns of Narration and Vision
Nina Cartier - I Get Lifted?: Delineating Uplift’s Restrictions Upon Black Female Desire in Silent Era Race Films
Kyna B. Morgan - The First African American Woman Film Producer: Maria P. Williams and The Flames of Wrath

European Stars and Audiences
Dominique Nasta and Muriel Andrin - Engaging National Emotions on Screen: European Silent Women in “strikingly effective” Melodramas
Anna Cabak Rédei - Garbo as ’Greta’ in Pabst’s The Joyless Street (1925)
Irina Novikova - Female Stars of Cinematic Peripheries – Lilita Berzinja (Latvia)
Silvia Horváth - Feminine (self-)staging in the Hungarian Silent Film of the 1910th

Strike a Pose: Female Models and Magicians
Cynthia Chris - Censoring Purity
Pierre Chemartin and Nicolas Dulac - The pose as performance: Early cinema acting and the female stereotype
Matthew Solomon - Women and the Trick Film

An extraordinary line-up indeed. And here are the films scheduled for evening screenings, with the conference organisers’ notes and comments. Note in particular the premiere of the restoration of the recently rediscovered Mary Pickford title, The Dawn of Tomorrow:

LA RUSE DE MISS PLUMCAKE / MISS PLUMCAKE’S TRICK (France, 1911)
35mm b/w print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
180 meters, 5 mins (18fps)
Dutch inter-titles
Prod: Pathé Frères / SCAGL
Director: Georges Monca
Script: unknown
Cast: Mistinguett, Andree Pascal, Charles Lorrain

This comedy offers us the music-hall star and future ‘queen’ of the revue, Mistinguett, in the role of a maid that is mistaken for her American mistress while visiting Paris. Mistinguett makes a parody of the
attractiveness of American women and lampoons Parisian men’s idolatry with them. The film’s inclusion in the program serves three purposes: first, because the print is incomplete, it may be taken as an example of a fragment, one of the core topics of this conference; second, bringing the existence of this rare print of a Pathé-SCAGL comedy with Mistinguett to the attention of feminist film historians; and third, calling attention to Mistinguett’s significance to the relations between French music-hall and cinema in the early 1910s, which deserves more research.

DIE LANDPOMERANZE / THE UNWIELDY COUNTRY WOMAN (Germany, 1917?)
35mm (Desmet method) colour print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
540meters (ca)., 26mins (18fps)
German intertitles
Prod: Treumann-Larsen Film GmbH
Director: Dr. R. Portegg aka Rosa Porten and Franz Eckstein
Script: Rosa Porten
Cast: Rosa Porten (Isa), Franz Verdier (Caspar Freiherr), Max Wogritsch (Jürgen von Oesterlingk)

Isa’s father, a wealthy gentleman of the countryside, wants her to marry Jürgen. However, Jürgen is rather prejudiced towards country women. Furthermore, he is attracted to a rich girl from the city. Upon hearing this, Isa, who doesn’t want to get married anyway, swears to teach Jürgen a lesson. For this purpose, she leaves her house and applies for a job (disguised as a boy) at Jürgen’s household. This fast-paced comedy, written and directed by Rosa Porten herself, appears in almost no written sources. It is therefore no surprise that this film was lost for many years, until this incomplete print appeared in the Nederlands Filmmuseum collection, carrying the original German titles. Die Landpomeranze has been preserved in 2008 in order to be presented for the very first time at this conference. Given the impossibility to complete the missing ending, due to complete lack of written sources, the preserved print has an open end, in hope that the missing reel(s) get discovered somewhere in the future.

Trailer DIE GESUNKENEN / THE SUNKEN (Germany, 1925)
35mm b/w print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
65 meters, 3 mins (18fps)
German inter-titles
Prod: Aafa Film
Director: Rudolf Walther-Fein
Script: Ruth Goetz and Leo Heller, based on the novel by Luise Westkirch
Cast: Asta Nielsen, Olga Tschechova, Hans Albers, Wilhlem Dieterle, Otto Gebühr

Dutch trailer from the presumed lost Asta Nielsen film Die Gesunkenen (1925), a drama based on a scenario by Ruth Goetz after the novel Diebe (Thieves) by Luise Westkirch. The Dutch censorship board noted about the film (2340 meters, + 117 minutes): ‘rough milieu’, ‘cocaine abuse’, ‘prostitution’, ‘ladies and gents of suspect repute’. In addition to Nielsen, the film featured the actors William Dieterle, Otto Gebühr, Olga Tschechowa and Hans Albers.

‘A SANTANOTTE / HOLY NIGHT (Italy, 1922)
35 mm colour print restored by Associazione Orlando (Bologna), Cineteca Nazionale (Rome) and George
Eastman House (Rochester, USA), with the endowment of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
1250 meters, 61 mins (18 fps)
Italian inter-titles
Prod: Films Dora (Neaples), “Serie grandi lavori popolari.”
Director: Elvira Notari
Script: Elvira Notari, based on the song ‘A Santanotte by Eduardo Scala (words), Francesco Buongiovanni
(music).
Photography: Nicola Notari.
Principal cast: Rosè Angione (Nanninella), Alberto Danza (Tore Spina), Eduardo Notari (Gennariello), Elisa
Cava (madre di Tore), Carluccio, a student of Notari’s school of acting.
Original length: mt. 1285.

Based on a popular Neapolitan song by Eduardo Scala and Francesco Buongiovanni, ‘A santanotte was one of the greatest hits of Elvira and Nicola Notari’s Dora Films. It tells the tragic story of Nanninella, a waitress who supports her alcoholic and abusive father Giuseppone. She is in love with Tore, but her father prefers the deceptive Carluccio. When Giuseppone accidentally dies, Carluccio accuses Tore of murder. Nanninella is forced to accept Carluccio’s marriage proposal hoping that this will convince him to withdraw his accusations against Tore. As she tries to escape with Tore on the day of her wedding, the film ends in death and misery. The story has several points in common with that of Assunta Spina, a popular theatrical drama by Salvatore Di Giacomo that Francesca Bertini had adapted into a film in 1915. Yet Notari’s film surpasses its predecessor in its crude representation of patriarchal oppression, offering a powerful melodramatic interpretation of the everyday experience of so many Italian working class women at the beginning of the century.

DIE BÖRSENKÖNIGIN / THE QUEEN OF THE STOCK-EXCHANGE (Germany, 1916)
35mm colour print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
1090 meters, 52 mins (18fps)
Dutch inter-titles
Prod: Neutral Film
Dir: Edmund Edel
Script: Edmund Edel
Cast: Asta Nielsen, Aruth Wartan, Willy Kaiser-Heyl

Asta Nielsen plays the proprietor of a copper mine on the verge of ruin. After the plant manager has traced a new copper vein, she buys the almost worthless shares and therewith secures the finances of the mine and herself. Gratefully, she makes the manager, with whom she is also in love, a share-holder. But when he deceives her with another woman, she takes revenge with great sovereignty. The film is particularly interesting for its setting – the male-dominated milieus of an industrial plant and of the stock-exchange – and for Nielsen’s superior role in it, which she plays with both style and gusto.

Trailer VADERTJE LANGBEEN / DADDY LONGLEGS (The Netherlands, 1919)
35mm b/w print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
32 meters, 1 min (18fps)
Dutch inter-titles
Prod: Mary Pickford Co.
Director: Marshall Neilan
Script: Agnes Johnson, based on the novel by Jean Webster
Cast: Mary Pickford (Jerusha Abbott), Milla Davenport (Mrs. Lippett)

Among the few silent trailers of the Filmmuseum collection, this stylish trailer is remarkable for the drawings it contains. Discovered and preserved in 2004 during the international Mary Pickford research project by Christel Schmidt, this film has only been shown in Amsterdam during the Pickford program. Although the trailer shows nothing of the film itself, it constitutes an important evidence to prove the
popularity of Mary Pickford with Dutch audiences.

THE DAWN OF A TOMORROW / NATTENS SKUGGOR (USA, 1915)
35mm colour print from the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute
1283 meters, 66 mins (17 fps)
Swedish inter-titles
Prod: Famous Players Film Co.
Director: James Kirkwood
Script: Eve Unsell, based on the novel and the play The Dawn of a Tomorrow by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Principal cast: Mary Pickford (Glad), David Powell (Dandy), Forrest Robinson (Sir Oliver Holt), Robert
Cain (his nephew)

This conference screening will be the premiere of the restored Mary Pickford film The Dawn of a Tomorrow, a film that was considered lost until a tinted nitrate print with Swedish inter-titles surfaced in 2005. The film is set in London and Pickford plays Glad, ”the poorest and happiest of all orphans”. During the course of the film, this angel in a Dickensian world gives shelter to an evicted mother and child, prevents a suicide, intervenes to inhibit domestic violence, and convinces her sweetheart to reform. The beauty of the close-ups displays an extraordinary preciseness of expression that makes this long lost Pickford film a revelation to watch.

FLICKAN I FRACK / THE GIRL IN TAILS (Sweden, 1926)
35mm colour print from the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute
2506 meters, 115 mins (19 fps)
Swedish inter-titles
Prod: AB Biografernas Filmdepôt
Director: Karin Swanström
Script: Hjalmar Bergman, Ivar Johansson, based on the novel Flickan i frack by Hjalmar Bergman
Principal cast: Einar Axelsson (Ludwig von Battwhyl), Magda Holm (Katja Kock), Nils Arehn (her father),
Georg Blomstedt (Starck, the headmaster), Karin Swanström (Hyltenius, the vicar’s wife), Erik
Zetterström (Curry, Katja’s brother)

An early example of cross-dressing in Swedish film, a restored version of the comedy Flickan i frack will be screened at the conference for the first time ever. Magda Holm plays Katja, a bright, small-town daughter of an inventor who cares more for the upbringing of his son than his daughter. When Katja’s request for money to buy a new dress for the examination ball is turned down by her father, she decides to attend the ball dressed in tails, creating a further scandal by drinking and smoking cigars. Flickan i frack was Karin Swanström’s fourth and last film as a director, and she also plays one of the leading parts in the film. The film was remade in 1956.

BILLY’S STRATEGEM / DE LIST VAN BILLY (USA, 1912)
35mm b/w print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum, courtesy of the AFI.
290 meters, 14 mins (18fps)
Dutch inter-titles
Prod: Biograph
Director: D.W. Griffith
Script: George Hennessy
Cast: Edna Foster (Billy), Wilfred Lucas, Claire McDowell, Inez Seabury, Robert Harron, William Butler

Billy and his sister are home with their grandfather, while their parents are out working. Their house gets attacked by the Indians, who get past the grandfather. However, Billy has a plan; he finds a way to get out of the house and blows up the house with the Indians in it. This Griffith film, starring Edna Foster as Billy, was repatriated from the Nederlands Filmmuseum archive to the USA, through the AFI, back in 1974. The film was then restored by the AFI, and a projection print, still carrying Dutch titles was kindly donated to the Filmmuseum Collection.

COURAGEOUS COWARD /SUKI’S REHABILITATIE (USA, 1919)
35mm (Desmet method) colour print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
283 meters, 14 mins (18fps)
Dutch inter-titles
Prod: Haworth Pictures
Director: William Worthington
Script: Frances Guihan, based on a story by Tom Geraghty
Cast: Sessue Hayakawa (Suki Iota), Tsuru Aoki (Rei Oaki)

Suki Iota, a young Japanese-American lawyer, is investigating a murder case and is secretly in love with his custodian’s niece, Rei. When Suki realizes that Rei’s boyfriend Tom is involved in the murder case, he drops it, despite being called a coward for his actions. The only surviving fragment of this long lost film is its last reel. Despite the fact that most of the action is lost, Nederlands Filmmuseum decided to make a presentation print of this fragment, since it is still worthwhile to watch Tsuru Aoki and her real-life husband Sessue Hayakawa in the few romantic scenes that have survived. Another point of interest is the way in which Aoki’s character gets criticized in the film as a young woman of Japanese origins who in her eagerness to become Americanized neglects her own roots.

UMANITÀ / HUMANKIND (1919)
35 mm colour print restored by Associazione Orlando (Bologna) and Cineteca Nazionale (Rome), with
the endowment of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
720 meters, 35 mins (18 fps)
Italian inter-titles
Prod: Liana Film (Rome)
Director: Elvira Giallanella
Script: Based on Vittorio Emanuele Bravetta’s poem Tranquillino dopo la guerra vuol ricreare il mondo
Principal cast: a little boy (Tranquillino), a little girl (Serenetta)

Presented in an introductory title as a “humoristic-satirical-educational” work, the film is centered on two young siblings, Tranquillino and Serenetta, who get up during the night to steal from the jam jar and play with Daddy’s cigarettes. The smoke gives Tranquillino a terrifying dream: the world has been destroyed by a terrible war and his attempts to recreate the world only makes him retrace and redo the mistakes of humankind during the course of history, from dictatorship to war. The backward trip throughout the pastmakes the kids realise that history has been built on arms and war. Desperate and frightened, they seek help in prayer and are finally saved by a bearded God, who appears in the sky and takes them in his arms. Based on a poem for children by Vittorio Emanuele Bravetta, Umanità is the only title in Elvira Giallanella’s filmography as a director. A quite mysterious figure, Giallanella was involved in film production since 1913, when she participated in the founding of the Vera Film company, which produced one of the first Futurist films, Mondo baldoria (1913). It is uncertain whether Umanità was ever screened, as it’s not listed in the censorship archives and never mentioned in period film magazines.

KAERLIGHED OG PENGE / LOVE OR MONEY aka OUTWITTED (Denmark, 1912)
35mm colour print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
260 meters, 13 mins (18fps)
Dutch inter-titles
Prod: Nordisk Films Kompagni
Director: Leo Tscherning
Script: Harriet Bloch
Cast: Else Frölich, Oscar Stribolt

Kaerlighed og penge is a comedy after a scenario by Harriet Bloch in which men’s intentions with women are getting spoofed. Both the situation and the plot are rather surprising. The main character, Karen, is a well-to-do single mother with a son. She has three admirers courting her: a lieutenant, a poet and a wealthy man. This amuses rather than impresses her, and she candidly questions if they are after her love or her money. One day, her friend from America, Ebba, visits Karin, who seizes the opportunity to throw a party. Together they concoct a test to find out about each man’s true intentions… and they are having a ball while evaluating the outcome.

PAS DE FEMMES! / NO WOMEN! (France, 1920)
35mm (Desmet method) colour print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
506 meters, 27 mins (18fps)
Dutch inter-titles
Prod: Film Denizot, Marseilles
Director: Vincenzo Denizot
Script: unknown
Cast: unknown

This comedy is exceptional in two respects: first, it seems to be an unknown French production by the Italian director Vicenzo Denizot, known from Maciste-films; and most importantly in the context of this
conference, it seems a rare counterpart to the many anti-suffragette films of the time: it ridicules antifeminism. A luxury hotel by the sea is occupied by a bunch of spoiled girls eager for excitement beyond their daily routines of gourmet dining and playing tennis. The chief rascal among them is Suzy, who preferably drives her governess to despair with her unruliness. One day, a notorious anti-feminist arrives together with his nephew, to recover from the stress of campaigning against furious women. He demands to be served only by men and chases the chamber maid from his room. The girls agree that this is an affront to women’s dignity and Suzy is appointed by lot to scheme and lead their vengeance…

DIE LIST EINER ZIGARETTENMACHERIN / WANDA’S TRICK (Germany, 1918)
35mm colour print from the Nederlands Filmmuseum
920 meters, 45 mins (18fps)
French inter-titles
Prod: Treumann-Larsen Film GmbH
Director: Dr. R. Portegg aka Rosa Porten and Franz Eckstein
Script: Wanda Treumann
Cast: Wanda Treumann, Heinrich Schroth, Marie Grimm-Einödshofer

This is a film produced by and starring German comedienne Wanda Treumann, and co-written and co-directed by Rosa Porten. Rosa Porten made films in the 1910s together with her husband Franz Eckstein, using the pseudonym Dr. R. Portegg. According to contemporary press, they were known for their proficient direction. The film mixes comedy with romance and social drama. It focuses on the interrelations of gender and class and on a factory girl’s independent spirit, business competence, and sense of humour. The plot has a serious undertone, but both its comic twists and Treumann’s guileless acting lend it a striking breeziness and a pro-lib edge.

A remarkable selection, with a palpable sense of exciting discovery. All details of the conference and screenings, including registration, accommodation, location and so forth, can be found on the conference website.

Visual empires

The fourth Visual Delights conference, Visual Empires, will take place at the University of Sheffield between 3-5 July 2009, and a call for papers has been issued.

Popular visual cultures have been central to the construction and propagation of imperial and colonial narratives and have helped define the nature of Empire. They have been intrinsically linked to discourses about the rise and fall of Imperial fortunes in the 19th and early 20th centuries and have been studied as both evidence of imperial attitudes to race and colonial subjects and as propaganda texts which helped spread and cement imperial and colonial ideologies. This conference seeks to explore this rich visual archive and to examine the roles played by popular visual culture in the construction of narratives concerning issues of race, identity, colonial and imperial ideologies, nationalism, patriotism and the ‘Visual Empire.’

We would like to receive suggestions for papers with deal with these issues in popular cultural forms such as photography, advertising, cinema, theatre, the magic lantern, ethnographic display and world’s fairs before 1930. Suggested themes could include:

• Photography and constructions of ‘otherness’
• Ethnographic display and racial identities
• Advertising and imagined colonies
• Cinema and the mapping of Empire
• The magic lantern and the topography of Empire
• Music hall and the patriotic show

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent to Simon Popple (s.e.popple [at] leeds.ac.uk) or The Louis Le Prince Centre, The Institute of Communications Studies, The Houldsworth Building, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. The deadline for submissions is 1 November 2008.

The conference will be jointly hosted by the Louis Le Prince Centre, University of Leeds and the National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield. It is held in conjunction with the journal Early Popular Visual Culture.

Between page and film

Anny Ondra in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Manxman (1929), based on the Hall Caine novel, from 1000 Frames of Hitchcock

The Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London is hosting a one day event with the imposing title of Cross-media cooperation between the publishing, theatrical and film industries: an interdisciplinary colloquium. The event takes place Saturday 12 April, and is an output of an AHRC-funded project on cross-media cooperation in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s.

The project is looking at the origins of the syndication or marketing of an author’s rights across several media, so common today, which it locates in the 1920s and 1930s. The aim of the colloquium is to draw together research from different disciplines to examine the extent of cross-media cooperation between media professionals, agents, and authors and ask how the past has shaped practices of the present day.

And here’s the programme, which has plenty on the cross-relationship in Britain between popular literature and film in the silent era:

Panel 1
Prof Alexis Weedon (University of Bedfordshire)
Some observations on cross-media co-operation in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s
Dr Vincent L. Barnett (University of Bedfordshire)
Elinor Glyn. The Novelist As Hollywood Star
Dr Mary Hammond (University of Southampton)
Hitchcock and Hall Caine: the Victorian Bestseller on the Silent Screen

Panel 2
Dr Amy Sargeant (Reader in Film, University of Warwick)
Frederick Britten Austin: Boy’s Own Stories, Girls’ Romances and Interwar Politics
Nathalie Morris (University of East Anglia)
Eminent British Authors and the Stoll Film Company
Dr Caroline Copeland (Napier University)
Katherine Cecil Thurston’s Chilcote

Panel 3
Dr Simon Frost (Institute of literature, media and cultural studies, University of Southern Denmark)
A Toga Tale of Ingomar the Barbarian: in print, in drawing rooms, at fairgrounds and in Hollywood
Dr Lawrence Napper (University of Greenwich and at King’s College, London)
‘Not over-exercising our intellectual powers in the choice of subjects’: The Gainsborough scenario department, 1929-31

Panel 4
Dr Simone Murray (recorded presentation from Monash Australia)
What Are You Working On?: the shifting role of the author in an era of cross-media adaptation
Prof Juliet Gardiner
Talk: Contemporary adaptation of Atonement

No indication on the colloquium web page as to when it starts or ends, or whether those panels overlap, but it does tell you that it is priced at £30 standard; £20 members/concessions, that the venue is Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E, and that spaces are limited so early booking is advisable.

Registration forms are on the site, and more information can be got from Jon Millington, Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; Email jon.millington [at] sas.ac.uk.

… and London screen history

The Angel cinema in Islington, 1917

Hot on the heels of that last post on the East Finchley Phoenix comes news of a one-day event at Birkbeck College on London’s screen history. Organised by the University of London Screen Studies Group, in association with the London Screen Studies Centre, Birkbeck College and Film Studies journal, the event on Friday 14 March brings together a range of recent work on London’s heritage of film production and particularly reception. Here’s the programme:

London Screen History

Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WC1
9.30–18.00 Lecture Theatre B33

• Ian Christie: Introduction
• Michele Daniels: The Coming of Talking Films to London, 1928-29
• Jude Cowan: ‘The First Film Studios at Ealing: Warwick Trading Company 1907-1909 and Barker Motion Photography 1909-1918’
• Pierluigi Ercole: ‘Little Italy on the brink: London Italians and War Films, 1915-1918’

11.00-11.30 tea and coffee

• Brigitte Flickinger (Heidelberg): ‘Living and leisure: Cinema-going in London in the 1910s and 1920s - a view from outside’
• Luke McKernan (British Library): ‘Children’s cinemagoing in London before WW1’

13.00-14.00 Lunch

• Charlotte Brunsdon (Warwick): ‘Shaping the Cinematic City: Three London Journeys’

15.00

• Toby Haggith: Early London housing films
• Angela English, Jenny Davison: ‘Their Past Your Future and working with London community groups’
• Roland-Francois Lack: ‘Still Point of the Turning World: Piccadilly Circus in Film’

16.30-17.00 Tea and coffee

• John Sedgwick (London Metropolitan): ‘The commercial significance of London’s West End cinemas’
• Richard Gray (CTA): ‘London’s cinema buildings’

The programme has been published a bit late in the day, but it’s a terrific line-up (your humble scribe notwithstanding), so do come along (there’s a small charge for tea and coffee) and see if we can get the audience to outnumber the speakers, at least by a little bit.

Colour and the moving image

In this our year of colour, here’s a call for papers on a pertinent conference, which comes out of an ongoing three-year research project at the University of Bristol which is examining the histories of Kinemacolor and Technicolor in Britain.

Colour and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive

Conference: 10th July - 12th July 2009, Bristol, UK

Keynote speakers: Tom Gunning (University of Chicago), Laura Mulvey (Birkbeck)

‘An inquiry into colour can take you just about anywhere’ (David Batchelor, Chromophobia, 2000)

Call for Papers: This conference addresses questions emerging through a renewed interest in colour film and as an interdisciplinary subject. The event is part of an AHRC-funded project on colour film, led by Professor Sarah Street. While colour is a fundamental element of film forms, technologies and aesthetics it is rarely singled-out for analysis. The aim of the conference is to extend previous work on colour and to consider its form and functions from a range of perspectives within four major strands: histories and technologies; film theory; philosophies and aesthetics of colour; the ethics, practices and theories surrounding the deterioration and conservation of colour film. In addition to formal conference papers, the event will include screenings of prints from the BFI National Film Archive. We invite proposals which address broad issues raised by colour and the moving image. The conference will provide a forum for discussion which is informed by, and directly addresses, the interrelations of the theory, history and aesthetics of colour film and of moving image technologies in their broadest sense. Proposals which focus on questions of colour in one or more of the following areas are particularly welcome:

- star systems
- reception theory
- pre-filmic, pro-filmic and onscreen spaces
- fantasy, spectacle, realism and/ or ‘natural’ colour
- colour theory
- synaesthesia: theories and practices of the interrelations of colour, sound, music as sensation
- chromophilia/chromophobia
- distanciation and avant garde film
- colour and genre
- film histories and new technologies: video, DVD, small screen technologies as new viewing spaces
- Colour systems including Kinemacolor, Dufaycolor, Chemicolor, Agfacolor, Technicolor, Eastmancolor

We invite abstracts of c.200 words for individual papers or pre-constituted panels consisting of 3 papers to be submitted by 1st September 2008. Please send abstracts to dram-colourconference@bristol.ac.uk. If you prefer to submit your abstract by post, the address is as follows: Colour and the Moving Image Conference, c/o Dr Liz Watkins, Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, Cantocks Close, Woodland Road, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UP, UK.

Colour and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive is hosted by the Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, University of Bristol, UK with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Screenings in co-operation with the BFI National Film Archive, UK and supported by Screen as one of its 50th Anniversary regional events.

Modernism and visual culture

And another call for papers and conference coming up. You have to look a little harder at this one to see the silent cinema connection, but it’s there.

MODERNISM AND VISUAL CULTURE

1st-2nd November 2008
Oxford University, UK

Keynote Speakers
David Trotter (Cambridge University)
Laura Marcus (Edinburgh University)
Maggie Humm (University of East London)

“A writer … has need of a third eye whose function is to help out the other senses when they flag.” (Virginia Woolf, 1925)

In the wake of recent analyses of the landscape of visual cultures at the end of the nineteenth century, new contexts have become available for understanding the emergence and shape of modernism. This conference seeks to unpick our tangled model of the relationships between the established arts in the modernist period and between modernism and popular culture, and to illuminate the types of reactions occasioned in the established arts by the emergence of modern mass media. Papers on any aspect of the relationship between modernist literatures and cultures with visual culture, including cinema and fine art, are welcome.

Possible questions to consider:

• Are recent claims for modernism’s affinity with popular culture anything new?
• Was Cubism’s debt to chronophotography a model for - or an exception to – modernism’s relationship with photo-chemical reproduction?
• Was the ‘modernity’ to which the established arts responded actually the emergence of a rival new cultural landscape comprised of cinema, variety theatre, instantaneous photography, stage illusions, the moving panorama, mass spectator sports, moving-image lantern shows, the illustrated short story and the cartoon strip?
• Did literary modernism emerge in emulation of the innovations occurring in modernist painting?
• What role did modernism play in altering established theories of visual culture?
• Can modernism and late-nineteenth-century popular visual culture be seen as the twin products of a single preceding historical development?
• What singular and identifiable properties, if any, did such related forms as cinema, cartoon strips or shadowgrams have in impacting on the existing arts?
• Were the different modernisms of the various established arts the product of their varying vantage points on new media forms?
• If new visual media generated modernism, did they do so by threatening to become art forms themselves, or by throwing the distinct qualities of the existing arts into relief?
• Were modernists already modernists when their work adopted the traits of various new forms of visual culture?
• Is realism in cinema equivalent to modernism in the existing arts?
• Was the reflexivity learned by the group of polymedia practitioners we call modernists the basis of modernist form in all of the arts?

Speakers are encouraged to use visual material in their presentations. Send 300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers to Andrew Shail (andrew.shail [at] at-annes.ox.ac.uk), by 1 April 2008. Panel proposals are welcome – please include contact details and affiliations for all speakers.

Heady stuff.

Funny people these foreigners

A call for papers has been issued for ‘Funny People these Foreigners’, an international conference on international comedy, organised by the Communication, Cultural and Media Studies Research Centre, the University of Salford. After the success their conference last year, ‘What Have You Got In That Box? - Comedy and Regional National Identity’, they are inviting proposals for papers that investigate any aspect of comedy with an international perspective. Suggested topics might include:

* Breaking language barriers - successful comedy crossovers
* Les Visiteurs
* Roberto Benigni
* Asterix
* M. Hulot
* USA/UK transfers: successes and failures
* Silent Cinema
* National/International Comedy stars
* Dubbing vs subtitling debate
* British Comedy in international markets
* Comedy co-productions
* Film and TV Comedy and national identity
* Viva Los Simpsons! Universality of humour

And all points in between. Proposals (maximum 300 words) should be sent to Dr C.P. Lee (c.lee [at] salford.ac.uk) or Dr Andy Wills (a.willis [at] salford.ac.uk), by 17 March. The conference will take place 5-6 June 2008.

2008 - The Year of Colour

A happy new year to one and all!

2007 was a productive year for The Bioscope, from small beginnings, and I hope that the coming year will see the service continue to gow and for the archive of useful content to build up. In 2008 I’ll be continuing to provide news on events, festivals, conferences, screenings, DVD releases and online resources for early and silent cinema. The Library of freely-available digitised documents will continue to grow (there is quite a backlog of titles to be added in due course), and I hope to add new features and maybe indulge in a redesign somewhere along the line.

However, the major theme running through 2008 will be colour cinematography in the silent era. 2008 sees the centenary of the first public exhibition of Kinemacolor, the world’s first natural colour motion picture system. Pedants may say that the centenary of Kinemacolor might have been 1906/2006 (when it was patented), 1907/2007 (when it was exhibited in a preliminary form to an audience of film professionals) or 1909/2009 (when it was first called Kinemacolor and was first exhibited to a paying public). But 1 May 1908 was when the system was first shown to a startled general audience at Urbanora House, Wardour Street, London - and that’s good enough for me.

So throughout 2008 there will be posts on colour cinematography to 1930. Not just Kinemacolor (though there will be plenty on that), but the experimental efforts that preceded it, hand-painted and stencil colour, tinting and toning, Biocolour, Cinechrome, Chronochrome, Kodachrome, Prizmacolor, Technicolor, Polychromide, Kodacolor, and more. There will be potted histories, archive documents, illustrations and (if I can find them) film clips. It’ll all build up into a year-long series to cherish and keep.

Lastly, here’s a checklist of some of the silent film events taking place over the year (all of which and more will be recorded in the Calendar section):

14-18 January - The Bioscope Festival of Lost Films
17-20 January - Slapstick 2008 silent comedy festival, Bristol
24-27 January - StummFilmMusikTage festival, Erlangen
9 February - Border Crossings: Rethinking Early Cinema conference, Berkeley
22-23 February - Kansas Silent Film Festival
13-16 March - Cinefest, Syracuse
26-28 March - City in Film conference, Liverpool
3-6 April - British Silent Cinema Festival, Nottingham
11-13 June - The Fifth International Women and the Silent Screen conference, Stockholm
17-21 June - Domitor conference, Peripheral Early Cinemas, Perpignan and Girona
28 June-5 July - Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
11-13 July - San Francisco Silent Film Festival
8-10 August - Capitolfest, New York
28 August-1 September - Cinecon festival, Hollywood
25-28 September - Cinesation festival
4-11 October - Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone

Keep reading, keep commenting, and tell your friends.

Re-envisioning the child in Italian film

www.sall.ex.ac.uk

Re-envisioning the Child in Italian Film: New Perspectives on Children and Childhoods from Early Cinema to the Present is a conference being held 14-15 July 2008 at the University of Exeter. Normally we don’t allow non-words like ‘re-envisioning’ here at The Bioscope, but this promises to be an interesting congruence of Italian studies, film studies and childhood studies. The conference blurb assures us that “whilst the recurrent presence of the filmic child has been acknowledged within traditional film historiography, its changing role and status has until recently suffered from a peculiar critical neglect.” They are asking for papers on the following:

* Representations of children in early cinema
* The child in historical drama/costume drama
* The role of the child in Italian film criticism
* Child actors
* The politicisation of children and childhoods
* Violence and the traumatised child
* Childhood and innocence
* The lost, endangered or missing child
* The resurfacing of lost childhoods/the ghosts of childhood
* The child and questions of gender and sexuality
* Childhood and genre
* Childhood under postmodernity and the ‘death of childhood’
* Re-reading the child in Neorealism
* The child in global cinema
* Childhood and immigration

The representation of children in early cinema is a subject that merits serious academic investigation, and though the concentration on Italian rather narrows the field, hopefully there will be someone to take on the theme. The Call for Papers closes 1 February 2008. Further details from The School of Arts, Lenguages and Literatures, University of Exeter.

Non solo dive

www.nonsolodive.com

More information is now available on Non solo dive (Not Only Divas), a conference and retrospective on women and silent Italian cinema. The conference takes place in Bologna, 14-16 December, and here’s the line-up:

Friday, December 14

2.30 PM – Welcoming addresses

3.00 PM-6.30 PM – Session I:

Jane Gaines – Duke University and Columbia University (USA)
Are They Us?: Our Work on Women Working in the International Silent Film Industry
Christine Gledhill – University of Sunderland (UK)
Rethinking Women’s Film History from Britain
Elda Guerra – Associazione Orlando
Beyond Boundaries: The Women’s Movement at the turn of the 20th Century, and the Emergence of a New Subjectivity

Alberto Friedemann – Associazione Fert
Women Entrepreneurs in the Turin Film Industry during the Silent Period
Andrea Palladino – Documentary Filmmaker
The Amazing Story of Frieda Klug: Research Hypothesis for a Documentary about the Origins of Italian Cinema

Discussion

Saturday, December 15

9.30 AM-1.00 PM – Session II:

Cristina Jandelli – University of Florence
“The Sharpest of Them All”: Diana Karenne
Teresa Antolin – Archivio in penombra
Elena and the Men: Francesca Bertini and Film Historiography
Elena Dagrada – State University of Milan
The Temptation of Silence: Eleonora Duse and the Cinema

Elena Mosconi – Catholic University of Milan
Divas and Anti-Divas in Early Italian Cinema: Elettra Raggio and Astrea
Valeria Palumbo – Journalist, L’Europeo
Viper: the Myth of Anna Fougez
Ester De Miro D’Ayeta – University of Genoa
Sewing Celluloid Ribbons: The Obscure Career of Esterina Zuccarone, Editor and Working Woman in Turin

Discussion

3.00 PM-6.30 PM – Session III:

Luca Mazzei – University of Florence
Alone in the Dark. Memories and Narratives of Italian Female Viewers between 1898 and 1916
Silvio Alovisio – University of Turin
The Image of the Spectatrix in the Italian Film Press of the Twenties
Gina Annunziata – University of Siena
Matilde Serao and the Cinema

Roberta Gandolfi – University of Parma
“New Women” of the Italian Theater between Reform and Tradition, Feminism and Modernism
Vittorio Martinelli - Italian Association for Research in Film History
Origins of the Italian Star System
Claudia Gianetto – Museo Nazionale del Cinema
Gigetta Morano: An “Irresistible Force”

Discussion

Sunday, December 16

10.00 AM – 1.00 PM – Session IV:

Kim Tomadjoglou – American Film Institute (USA)
Rethinking the Cinema of Elvira Notari
Irela Nuñez, Franca Farina – Cineteca Nazionale
Women’s Films of the Cineteca Nazionale: Restored and to be Restored
Micaela Veronesi – Italian Association for Research in Film History
A Woman Wants to “Recreate the World”. Umanità, by Elvira Giallanella

Stella Dagna – Museo Nazionale del Cinema
In the Giant’s Shadow. Second Lead Actresses in the Maciste series
Elena D’Amelio – University of Padua
Damned and Beautiful. Powerful Women of the Italian Epic Genre

Discussion

Monica Dall’Asta – University of Bologna
Conclusions

That’s an impressive, specialised but wide-ranging line-up, and to complement it there’s a retrospective of relevant films running 2-15 December at the Cinema Lumière, Bologna. The highlights are two new restorations: Elvira Giallanella’s pacifist film Umanità (1919), restored by the Cineteca Nazionale and the Orlando Association, and Elvira Notari’s ‘A Santanotte (1921), a Neapolitan melodrama, restored by the same institutions in association with George Eastman House. Notari is the subject of Giuliana Bruno’s influential study, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, and is now something of a cult figure. There are other Notari films on show, a collection of comedienne Lea Giunchi’s short films, Cenere (1916) (the only film of the legendary stage actress Elenora Duse), Francesca Bertini and Gustavo Serena’s Assunta Spina (1915), Giulia Rizzotto’s A Mosca Cieca (1921), and more.

The full conference and retrospective programme is downloadable here (PDF, 212MB, in Italian), and the website www.nonsolodive.com (also in Italian) will be active from 26 November. Clearly, knowing Italian will help, but English translation will be provided throughout the conference.

The rationale behind the event is given in this earlier post.