Nontheatrical Films for Women: Judith Crawley’s Four New Apple Dishes (1940) Available to Purchase

In 1940 Judith Crawley was commissioned by John Grierson, head of the National Film Board of Canada, to make a film about cooking with apples. The resulting film, Four New Apple Dishes, made on the economical 16 mm format, was the first film to be shot in color at the board and the first to be directed by a woman. Films such as Four New Apple Dishes with subject matter considered the domain of women such as child rearing, education, cooking, and housekeeping make evident how some women-identified filmmakers in the nontheatrical field were summoned to make films for and about women. Furthermore, the exhibition circuits where nontheatrical films for women screened—from homemaking classes to women’s clubs—reveal the networked infrastructure of women’s culture that undergirded the distribution and exhibition of these films.