Time to vote, vote, vote in the annual Silent London Poll of silent film excellence! silentlondon.co.uk/2025/12/21/t...

It's here! Go and pre-order a copy of ARCHIVING THE PAST for yourself and for your library! The book uncovers the story of women in France who, from the 1920s–1970s, played critical roles in the production of global cinema's history, as archivists, witnesses, and activists. @ucpress.bsky.social

It was a joy to write this festival report on Il Cinema Ritrovato '25 in Bologna!! (Highlights include contortionist snake ladies 🐍 & smashing the patriarchy! 🔨) FREE to read via @ucpress.bsky.social in the sizzling new issue of @filmquarterly.bsky.social 🎞️🎊 !! online.ucpress.edu/fq/article/7...

Check out former WFHI steering committee member Canan Balan's new book "Torn is the Curtain: Early Film Cultures in Istanbul." www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BalanT...

New to WFPP: Dagmar Brunow on Swedish writer and screenwriter Elin Wägner!

Together with Annie van den Oever, I was honored to interview Jane Gaines for NECSUS. Come for the history of Visible Evidence & @wfpproject.bsky.social; stay for the reflections on speculative historiography, Fredric Jameson's legacy & current attacks on higher ed. necsus-ejms.org/the-historic...

New issue alert!! I was chuffed to write this short piece on Ossi Oswalda for FILMBLATT -- *many thanks* to Philipp Stiasny for translating to German. 🎞️ www.filmblatt.de/2025/11/22/f... Lots of gems in here by @mharrabin.bsky.social et al + gorgeous images courtesy of @blomamsterdam.bsky.social!

Found by a student of my colleague Eli Boonin-Vail’s at SUNY Albany: New Rochelle, NY: theater taken over by Thanhouser star Fan Bourke in 1916. She says: “I think that a woman is as well qualified, if not better qualified, to run a neighborhood motion picture theatre, than a man."

Advance copies of this beaut arrived today! Congrats to author @aurspiers.bsky.social!! Can’t wait for you all to read it. www.ucpress.edu/books/archiv...

Horror ppl should watch Hell-Bound Train (James & Eloyce Gist, 1930) on @criterionchannl.bsky.social. The Gists were Black evangelists & amateur filmmakers who used their films in their sermons. This film is a catalogue of sins. Even w/ no budget, it has surprisingly haunting moments throughout.

New to WFPP: Richard Abel on film reviewer and writer Tildy Winks! The woman using this catchy nom de plume, unfortunately, remains unknown, unlike earlier "girl reporters" or concurrent film reviewers.

🎬Our interview series "Data Practices, Provenance, and Categorizations in Film History" is out now! 👉 doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Our #DAVIF project partners discuss how data practices and institutional and theoretical frameworks shape film-historical #metadata. #digitalfilmhistory #culturalheritage

A Virgin's Sacrifice (1922) is now streaming on the NFPF site with new music by Michael Mortilla. Starring Corinne Griffith, this snowbound tale was preserved photochemically by @eastmanmuseum.bsky.social and is available for home viewing for the first time. www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-fi...

I find it v difficult to put into words how honored and lucky i feel to have edited this issue on feminist historical methods, to have had so many important pieces of writing and thinking entrusted to me over these last few years. 1/ online.ucpress.edu/fmh/issue/11/4

Our Fall 2025 issue "Notes on Historical Methods" is now live! In her introduction, Katherine Groo reflects on the voices of historical writing, the long history of feminist methods, and the guiding concept and structure of the "note" itself. Open access for a limited time: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....

Must-see melodrama alert. Next Sunday, one of the best films in the BFI Melodrama season, the silent 1925 STELLA DALLAS, screens in NFT1 with the incredible orchestral score by Stephen Horne – who also introduces the screening. whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...

Exciting new documentary entering circulation! ELVIRA NOTARI: BEYOND SILENCE about Italy’s first woman director + journey to bring her work back to life. Trailer (w/ English subs) here. First learned of Notari via Giuliana Bruno’s classic monograph STREETWALKING ON A RUINED MAP vimeo.com/1125241996

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐖𝐅𝐏𝐏: Bart G. Moens's overview essay "Casting Shadows: Women’s Work at the Projection Department of Maison de la Bonne Presse (1895-1920)."

Happy Birthday to Danish actress/stuntwoman/screenwriter Emilie Sannom!

"For Lillian Chester, who wrote under the name Mrs. George Randolph Chester, the experience of 'collaboration' guided not only her encounter with the Hollywood industry, but almost every facet of her professional and personal life." wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-... #BOTD

"Acting in hundreds of early comic films, writing six and directing ten of these, Ruth Stonehouse was involved in film production from a very early date." wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-... #BOTD

With her sister, Adriana Ehlers (b. Sept. 28, 1894) worked in film labs, sold projection equipment, shot documentaries and more.

We actively are seeking hosts for future Women and the Silent Screen conferences, including WSS 2027! A helpful potential host info sheet & the application form can be found here: www.wfhi.org/about-wss. If you are interested in hosting WSS 2027, please submit a proposal by 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟕, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓.

Beatrice Maude Tildesley "was one of very few Australian intellectuals to write seriously on the cinema and can lay claim to being the country’s foremost independent film critic and commentator for a decade beginning in the mid-1920s."

New to WFPP: Mercedes Álvarez San Román on animator, film actress, and trick specialist Julienne Mathieu!

"Josephine Rector’s career in cinema as a scenario writer and actress is closely associated with Essanay." wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-... #BOTD

#Bornonthisday in 1914: filmmaker Esther Eng!

Happy Birthday to Italian screenwriter Renée Deliot!

Word is out!!! The curators of Cinema's First Nasty Women -- Elif Kaynakci, @hennefem.bsky.social, @laurah.bsky.social -- will co-deliver the UCLA Copley on Silent Cinema & Costume Design at the Giornate del Cinema Muto this year. 👒☔🌪️ 📍 Thursday 9th October, Teatro Verdi in Pordenone Save the date!

Iris Barry on Radio 4! silentlondon.co.uk/2025/09/18/i...

We've reactivated WFHI's listserv!! You can join here: lists.simplelists.com/WFHINetwork/... We look forward to exchanging feminist film historiographical research (and research questions), relevant scholarly and archival news and events, resources, and more with you all!

"Hazel Burnett, as she was primarily known, was a theater accompanist who performed in Texas’s biggest motion picture palaces in the 1910s and 1920s." wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/haze... #bornonthisday

Happy Birthday to Asta Nielsen!

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐖𝐅𝐏𝐏: Z. Rubi S. Lozoya on Indian director, screenwriter, and producer Fatma Begum!

Happy Birthday to Tsuru Aoki (born September 9, 1892)!

Happy Birthday to Hollywood screenwriter Sada Cowan!

Happy Birthday to actress and producer Clara Kimball Young!

Elizaveta Svilova's career, "which spanned far beyond her collaborations with her husband [Dziga Vertov], significantly advanced the early principles of cinematic montage."

Happy Birthday to Stefanía Socha! Socha, who was Polish by birth, arrived in Lima around 1926, and established an acting academy for the cinema with the promising name Perú Film. She produced one film starring her students, Los abismos de la vida (1929)

Happy Birthday to American actress, screenwriter, director, and producer Helen Gardner!

Happy Birthday to screenwriter Elizabeth R. Carpenter (aka Emily S. McCain)!

"Ruth Ann Baldwin was one of many female directors working at Universal during the silent era. A keen awareness of narrative convention as well as a wry perspective on the motion picture business comes across in [her] surviving feature, ’49-’17 (1917)."

Yuliya Solntseva in THE CIGARETTE GIRL OF MOSSELPROM (1924). She was married to Aleksandr Dovzhenko and co-directed with him, going solo after his death. She won Best Director at Cannes for CHRONICLE OF FLAMING YEARS (1961), the first (and, for decades, only) woman to do so.

You've heard of Noir-vember, but what about Silent September? (Which, tbc, I just made up.) Only watch silent films all month. I might give it a shot!

Happy Birthday to the actress, screenwriter, producer, and director Gene Gauntier!

"Born in Mexico City in 1904, Cube Bonifant published her distinctive film criticism in newspapers and magazines throughout the early twentieth century."

Happy Birthday to producer and director Harriet Parsons!

Happy Birthday to Tunisian actress and screenwriter Haydée Chikly!

"Winnifred Eaton is best known for her success as a novelist under the pseudo-Japanese pen name Onoto Watanna, but she also worked as a screenwriter, title writer, literary advisor, and scenario editor for Universal & MGM between 1921 and 1930..." wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/winn... #BOTD

"An opera singer turned film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer, Gemma Bellincioni was born in the Italian city of Monza on August 18, 1864."