Women and Silent Britain

The Mezzanine at BFI Southbank hosts changing displays curated from BFI Collections to complement seasons taking place in the cinemas. These world-class collections hold unique and diverse film and television materials, including stills, posters, personal and working papers, published and unpublished items. Our current display coincides with a study day in November which focuses on women in British silent film.

'The one thing never to be lost sight of in considering the cinema is that it exists for the purpose of pleasing women', wrote the critic Iris Barry in 1926. Women had been courted by film exhibitors from the earliest days of moving pictures and by the 1920s were thought to make up three-quarters of all British picturegoers. It was not only as audiences that women were central to the development of the cinema, however. While film production was, then as now, dominated by men, women were nevertheless widely active throughout the silent era, working as actors, writers, directors, producers, editors, camerawomen, critics, musicians, costumiers, publicists and exhibitors.

The multifarious presence of women was in part due to the status, structure and open nature of the cinema industry at this time. Some of the societal changes wrought by the First World War increased these opportunities, as many women found jobs replacing the men who had gone to fight. The perception of the cinema audience as a primarily female one further supported the work of women in the 1920s as it was often felt that they would have an instinctive understanding of, and empathy with, female audiences and readers.

This display takes a look at just a few of the women who worked in silent Britain. It focuses primarily on the years following the First World War and explores a host of professions and personalities, from bitchy columnists to serious screenwriters, from glamorous stars to determined producers and directors. Some forged successful careers in the 1930s, 1940s and beyond. Others did not survive the transition to sound. Whatever the case, it is clear that in the first decades of the twentieth century, women engaged with the cinema at all levels and profoundly shaped the way in which it was created, experienced and discussed.

To find out more about the BFI National Library and Special Collections please go to http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/ or telephone 020 7 957 4772.

Thanks to the Cinema Museum, London, and the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, Univeristy of Exeter.

Special Event: Women and Silent Britain: Women Writing Film
This study day considers all aspects of writing for or about the screen by the large number of women involved in the British cinema industry of the silent era, whether as screenwriters, critics, columnists, publicists, or authors of source novels and plays. The day will consist of screenings from the BFI National Archive, talks and workshops, followed by the rarely screened silent classic The Constant Nymph (1928).

Women and Silent Britain 2: Women Writing Film
Sat 7 Nov 10:00 – 17:00 NFT3

followed by:

The Constant Nymph with live piano accompaniment.
Sat 7 Nov 18:00 NFT3