Why have women such as Alice Guy-Blache, the creator of narrative cinema, been written out of film history? Why have so many women working behind the scenes in film been rendered invisible and silent for so long?
Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema explores the incredible contribution of women at the dawn of cinema when, surprisingly, more women were employed across the board in the film industry than they are now. It also looks at how women helped to shape the content, style of acting and development of the movie business in their roles as actors, writers, editors, cinematographers, directors and producers. In addition, we describe how women engaged with and influenced the development of cinema in their roles as audience, critics, fans, reviewers, journalists and the arbiters of morality in films. And finally, we ask when the current discrimination and male domination of the industry will give way to allow more women access to the top jobs.

In addition to its historical focus on women working in film during the silent film era, the term silent also refers to the silencing and eradication of the enormous contribution that women have made to the development of the motion picture industry. Contents and Contributors
Foreword by Bryony Dixon, Curator of Silent Film, BFI National Archive
Introduction by Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson
1. Girl from God's Country: The History of Women in Film and Other War Stories by Karen Day
2. Early African-American Female FIlmmakers by Aimee Dixon Anthony
3. The Silent Producer: Women Filmmakers Who Creatively Controlled the Silent Era of Cinema by Pieter Aquilia
4. Women Were Writing: Beyond Melodrama and Hot House Romances by Patricia Di Risio
5. Doing it all: Women's On- and Off-screen Contributions to European Silent Film by Julie K. Allen
6. Female Legends of the Silver Screen by Melody Bridges
7. Directors from the Dawn of Hollywood by Francesca Stephens
8. Interview with director Dorothy Arzner by Kevin Brownlow
9. Women film editors from silent to sound by Tania Field
10. Who was the first female cinematographer in the world? by Ellen Cheshire
11. When the women shoots: Ladies Behind the Silent Horror Film Camera by K. Charlie Oughton
12. Critics, Reformers and Educators: Film Culture as a Feminine Sphere by Shelley Stamp
13. U.S. Women Directors: The Road Ahead by Maria Giese

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