Responding to the widespread material loss of silent films today, this article constitutes a playful exercise in curating a selection of nonextant films directed, written, and produced by early women filmmakers. After an introduction to the exercise, which sets up the feminist and film curatorial stakes of such an endeavor, I present my thematically organized film program (curatorial statement and program notes) to the reader. Drawing together films by women who worked in Peru, Croatia, Egypt, China, Mexico, Poland, and the United States, I argue that curating lost films not only makes space for a more inclusive picture of women’s contributions to cinema history; this exercise is also a call for more imaginative approaches to feminist film and media curatorial practices.
“Wrath, Witches, and Wondrous Women”: A Curated Program of Lost Films Available to Purchase
Kate Saccone is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam where her practice-led research project engages with silent cinema, moving image exhibition practice and theory, and critical-feminist approaches to curatorial labor. Her writing has appeared in Feminist Media Histories, The Moving Image, Modernism/modernity, and Columbia University’s Women Film Pioneers Project, and she contributed the booklet essay for the Blu-ray set Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology (Flicker Alley, 2017). She is also the project manager and an editor of the Women Film Pioneers Project (https://wfpp.columbia.edu/) and currently serves on the Women and Film History International Steering Committee.
Kate Saccone; “Wrath, Witches, and Wondrous Women”: A Curated Program of Lost Films. Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2024; 10 (2-3): 145–158. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2024.10.2-3.145
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