Silent Cinema

Film Society 38

+ intro by BFI National Archive curator Bryony Dixon and guests

Presented for the first time since 1930, the Film Society’s 1930 tribute to women filmmakers.

  • Total running time 146min

  • With live piano accompaniment

We have been proudly championing the work of women filmmakers for many years at the BFI. But we were not the first to do so. The Film Society, a pioneering organisation of cinephiles, addressed the issue as early as 1930, in their 38th edition. It consisted solely of films produced or directed by women. Not all of these survive – we have lost films by Dorothy Arzner and Dinah Shurey – but we have enough to present, for the first time since 1930, this celebration of the women who featured in that groundbreaking programme.

Secrets of Nature: Plants of the Underworld

UK 1930. Director Mary Field. 11min. Digital

Cinderella

Germany 1922. Director Lotte Reinger. 16min. 35mm

Seashell and the Clergyman

France 1928. Director Germaine Dulac. 31min. 35mm

Peasant Women of Riazan

USSR 1927. Director Olga Preobrazhenskaya. 88min. Digital

See a screening of the silent film Limit in our Brazil on Film season.

Film on Film