British Universities Film & Video Council

moving image and sound, knowledge and access

What is Women’s Film History?

A second question following the first asks, ‘Is women’s film history only about film?’ Given that many women became involved in filmmaking through working in other media—as writers of adapted material or as scenario and screenwriters, as interior designers and fashion costumiers, as theatrical performers and music-hall entertainers, as journalists and critics, and in the many roles offered by television—women’s film history cannot ignore the institutional and creative relationships between different arts and media. Thus, while focused on film, we invite participation and exchange of perspectives from specialists in women’s history, theatre and literary studies and analysts of the publishing and television industries.

The film industry, film culture and women’s film history reaches beyond national boundaries

The second Workshop, held in collaboration with the Film Division of Columbia University in New York, addressed the internationalism of film history, which raises the question, ‘What does it mean to put “British” in front of film history?’ The film industry, film culture and women’s film history reaches beyond national boundaries through international co-production and creative cross-fertilisation. How to assign national identity becomes problematic, when film workers so frequently cross national borders and women change national affiliations and names. Luke McKernan’s account on his blog, Biscope, of his transnational hunt for Mary Murillo–a prolific and for a while highly paid scriptwriter in Hollywood in the 1910s and early 1920s, demonstrates the challenges presented by women’s cross-border careers. Born Mary O’Connor to Irish parents in Bradford in 1888, she throws the researcher a Latino red herring with the assumed surname, Murillo, and as her Hollywood career came to an end returned to write films in Britain and occasionally France in the 1920s to early 1930s before disappearing from view.

Ida Lupino, UK film actress and Hollywood director (photo by Alan Light)

Given the early internationalism of the film industry, the overwhelming presence of American films on British and Irish screens, and more recently the intensification of cross-national co-production and transnational circulation through digital technologies, the question arises whether the organization of film histories in national boxes impedes research and is any longer justifiable. In particular, in the creation of national archives and the writing of national film histories, does ‘nation’ obscure questions of gender? We need ways of thinking, researching and developing inter-archival resources that enable border-crossing, transnationally interconnected histories.

Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinema Past and Future
These questions underpinned the recent landmark international conference, Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinema Past and Future, held 13-15 April 2011 at the University of Sunderland. As on offshoot of the Network and platform through which it can draw in, and from, a wider community, Doing Women’s Film History will become a biennial event, alternating yearly with Women and the Silent Screen. The inaugural conference at Sunderland drew over a 100 delegates, with 70 papers split evenly between 35 UK and 35 overseas papers drawn from 16 different countries. This inspirational event provided testimony, if it was needed, to the searching questions opened up by women’s participation in the cinema’s history, and to the productiveness of trans-national, cross-media, cross-cultural exchanges of research findings, ideas and interpretations. In particular conferences papers, keynote presentations and roundtables enabled exchanges between those involved in the founding ideas and practices of second-wave feminist film groups of the 1970s and 1980s and a younger generation working in changed political, cultural and institutional conditions; between academic researchers (male and female) and women professionals involved in film production, distribution and exhibition; and between scholars and activists situated in different countries or coming from different ethnic backgrounds, who, drawing from diverse intellectual traditions and cultural histories, come through different entry points and with different perspectives to the study of cinema, film history and feminism.

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