movie world

More women worked in film during its first two decades than at any time since. Unfortunately, many early women filmmakers have been largely written out of film history, their contributions undervalued. This necessary and timely collection highlights the work of 9 of early cinema’s most innovative and influential women directors, re-writing and celebrating their rightful place in film history.

The BFI Early Women Filmmakers collection features a wide-ranging variety of fantastic work by female directors, writers and performers from the 1910s to the early 1940s, including Mabel Normand, Alice Guy Blache, Lois Weber, Dorothy Davenport, Germaine Dulac, Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Dorothy Arzner and Mary Ellen Bute. These women were technically and stylistically innovative, pushing the boundaries of narrative, aesthetics, and genre. Going back to the beginning of cinema, this collection makes visible the tremendous directorial contributions women made.

Clocking in at over 640 minutes of total content, including short documentaries that help to contextualise the films of these artists, this is a set that will keep anyone serious about film history busy for some time.

3xBD50+BD25 | 1080p AVC | 641 min | 138 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English intertitles, French intertitles with English subtitles
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, Western, Short

Contents:

Disc 1:

-- Falling Leaves (1912, 12 mins)
-- Making an American Citizen (1912, 14 mins)
-- The Girl in the Armchair (1912, 13 mins)
-- Greater Love Hath No Man (1911, 17 mins)
-- Algie, the Miner (1912, 13 mins)
-- Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913, 12 mins)
-- Ocean Waif (1916, 41 mins)

Bonus:
-- Alice Guy-Blache: a documentary (2018, 8 mins)
-- Lois Weber: a documentary (2018, 9 mins)
-- Mabel Normand: a documentary (2018, 8 mins): featurette on the director

Disc 2:

-- Suspense (1913, 10 mins)
-- Discontent (1916, 25 mins)
-- The Blot (1921, 94 mins)
-- Mabel's Dramatic Career (1913, 14 mins)
-- Mabel's Strange Predicament (1914, 12 mins)
-- Mabel's Blunder (1914, 15 mins)
-- His Trysting Place (1914, 22 mins)
-- Should Men Walk Home? (1928, 28 mins)

Bonus:
-- Mabel’s Dramatic Career, Mabel’s Blunder, His Trysting Place and Should Men Walk Home? feature previously unreleased scores by The Meg Morley Trio
-- Alternative score to Should Men Walk Home? by Mordecai Smyth

Disc 3:

-- The Woman Condemned (1934, 64 mins)
-- La Cigarette (1919, 50 mins)
-- La Souriante Mme. Beudet (1922, 43 mins)

Disc 4:

-- The Peasant Women of Ryazan (1927, 88 mins)
-- Le Roi des Aulnes (1929, 45 mins)
-- Dance, Girl, Dance (1940, 4 mins)
-- Parabola (1937, 9 mins)

Bonus:
-- Stills gallery