The  Gender  Studies  Program  in  the  Faculty  of  Arts  at  the  University  of  Melbourne,  in  association  with  the  

Victorian  College  of  Arts  and  Music,  is  proud  to  present:  

Women  and  the  Silent  Screen  VII:  Performance  and  the  Emotions  

 

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Women and the Silent Screen VII: Performance and the Emotions

Presented by the Gender Studies Program at the University of Melbourne

in association with VCAM and supported by the Miegunyah Distinguished Fellow program and the Macgeorge Bequest, the City of Melbourne, CoAsIt, the Ian Potter Foundation, the National Film and

Sound Archive, and the New Zealand Film Archive -Ngā Kaitiaki o Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua.

Sunday 29 September Registration: 3 – 3:30pm

Welcome and Opening of the Conference 3:30 – 4pm

Professor Barbara Creed (Cinema Studies), Professor Jeanette Hoorn (Director of Gender Studies), Dr. Victoria Duckett (VCA)

Opening Keynote Address 4 – 5pm

Pam Cook, University of Southampton

Natacha Rambova: Designing Culture, Staging Exoticism and Performing Identity in the 1920s

Reception 5-6pm Screening 1: 6 – 7.15pm

NZFA Venus  of  the  South  Seas,  dir.  James  R.  Sullivan,  New  Zealand  Dominion  Productions,  1924,  47  mins.  

Preceded  by:  Pathé  News  No.  67,  1924,  1.30  mins.  

[Hamilton  Shingle  &  Buster  Competition],  1926,  3  mins.  [Motion  Picture  Bathing  Beauty  Contest],  1925,  1  min.  

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Accompanied  by  Mauro  Colombis

Monday 30 September Registration: 9 – 9:30am

Keynote: 9.30

Richard Abel, University of Michigan

“A  Great  New  Field  for  Women  Folk"  Newspapers  and  the  Movies,  1911-­‐1916

Morning Tea 10:30 – 11am Session 1: 11 – 1pm

1A: Feminisms and partnerships on the early

Australian screen

Room 1

1B: Displacing conventions: Reviewing

genre and gender in early film

Room 2

1C: Women writing

Room 3

Chair: Deb Verhoeven Ann-Marie Cook (Queensland University of Technology) (Re)Assessing the Demise of the McDonagh Sisters Margot Nash (University of Technology Sydney) Lottie Lyell: the silent work of an Australian film pioneer Virginia Fraser (Independent Researcher) Strategic Identity: Senora Spencer “the only lady operator in the world” Deb Verhoeven (Deakin University) Courting Independence: The sensational case of Señora Spencer, ‘The Only Lady Cinematograph Artist in the World’

Chair: Jeanette Hoorn Stephen Gaunson (RMIT) The Lady Bushranger: Bushwomen and bushranging Susan Potter (University of New England) Frame, Space, Sexuality: D.W. Griffith’s An Unseen Enemy (Biograph, 1912) Jacqueline Anderson (Pratt Institute) Rescuing Women, or Society? D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, Lois Weber’s Where are my Children? And Family Melodrama Jane Gaines (Columbia University) A Melodrama Theory of Feminist Film

Chair: Shelley Stamp Canan Balan (Istanbul Şehir University) A Literary Feminist Experience of Silent Cinema: The Case of Halide Edip Elisa Cuter (Freie Universitaet Berlin) “In the mood of our modern times”: The Problematic Relationship Between Capitalism and Women’s Liberation as Explored Through the Work of Emilie Altenloh Amelie Hastie (Amherst College) The Eye of the Star: Critical Writings by Louise Brooks Amy Shore (SUNY Oswego) Nell Shipman and the

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Historiography Nature of Cinema

Lunch 1 – 2pm

Session 2: 2 – 3:30pm 2A: Social Reform,

Exploitation films and the fight for equality:

Explorations in women and social change

Room 1

2B: In dialogue with the past: Reinventing the

modern woman

Room 2

2C: Dance on screen

Room 3

Chair: Barbara Creed Mark Lynn Anderson (University of Pittsburgh) The Unremarkable Film Authorship of Dorothy Davenport Reid and the Woman’s Voice in Late Silent Cinema Chika Kinoshita (Shizuoka University of Art and Culture) Something More Than a Seduction Story: Abortion and Entertainment in the 1930s Japanese Film Culture April Miller (Barrett College, Arizona State University): Madness, Murder, and the Anti-Pastoral in Victor Sjöstrom’s The Wind

Chair: Hilary Hallett Jacqueline Dutton (University of Melbourne) Femmes futuristes. Representing Parisiennes in early French futuristic films Felicity Chaplin (Monash University) La Parisienne on the Silent Screen: Charles Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris Patricia Di Risio (University of Melbourne) The New Woman in Early Silent Film

Chair: Rachel Fensham Mary Simonson (Colgate University) Restaged Onscreen: Anna Pavlova, Rita Sacchetto, and “Dance Pictures” Minette Hillyer (Victoria University) To Dance the Native Dance Tami Williams (University of Wisconsin) Sensations and Sentiments: Gestural Abstraction, Gender and Intermediality in the Performing Arts of Belle Époque Paris

Afternoon Tea 3:30 – 4pm Screening 2: 4 – 5.40 pm

NFSA: The Girl of the Bush (Franklyn Barrett, 1921), 95 min La Fee aux Fleurs (Pathe) stencilled 90 secs

Accompanied  by  Mauro  Colombis !!!Move to Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre at the University of Melbourne Parkville Campus!!!

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Keynote Address: 6.30 – 7:30pm

Miegunyah Lecture: Mary Ann Doane, University of California, Berkeley

The  Face  in  Silent  Cinema  and  the  Discourse  of  the  Universal

Tuesday 1 October Registration: 9 – 9:15am

WIFI soft launch, Jane Gaines 9:15 – 9:30am

Keynote Address: 9.30 – 10:30am

Shelley Stamp, University of California, Santa Cruz

Feminist Media Historiography and the Work Ahead

Morning Tea 10:30 – 11am Session 3: 11 – 12.30pm

3A: The expanding screen: performance and

intermediality

Room 1

3B: Colonial Cinemas: Exploring Indigenous

Representation

Room 2

3C: Women and transnational cinema

Room 3

Chair: Victoria Duckett Eirik Frisvold Hanssen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) “Measured in its emotional possibilities”: A Doll’s House and the Performance of Gender in American Silent Cinema Elena Mosconi & Maddalena Bodini (University of Pavia) On the stage. Mimì Aylmer’s public and private life as a performance

Chair: Jane Landman Sheila Schvarzman (Anhembi-Morumbi University, São Paulo) The Guarany: the myth of nation´s founding in the Brazilian silent films Jani Wilson (University of Auckland) Wāhine Wahangū (Silent Māori Women): Wāhine Māori in Silent Feature Film Jane Landman (Victoria University) The silent women of the Australian South Seas colonial adventure

Chair: Tami Williams Louis Pelletier (Université de Montréal) Pauline Garon’s Transnational Career and French Canadian Identity Piotr Kulesza (Film Museum Lodz) Pola Negri. Legend of the cinema and first European movie star in Hollywood Caroline Eades (University of Maryland) A Turning-point in Alice Guy-Blaché’s Life and Work: from Paris to Fort Lee, N. J (1904-1914)

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Lunch 12:30 – 1:15 pm

Screening 3: 1:15 – 3.00 pm NZFA:  The  Bush  Cinderella,  dir.  &  prod.  Rudall  Hayward,  New  Zealand,  1928,  85  

mins.  Accompanied  by  Mauro  Colombis  

Afternoon Tea 3 – 3.20 pm

Session 4: 3:20 – 5:20 pm

4A: Questions in National Cinemas

Room 1

4B: Leading Ladies: Divas, Stars, and Serial

Queens

Room 2

4C: Addressing the audience: spectatorship, perception, and movie-

going

Room 3 Chair: Richard Abel Katja Lee (McMaster University) No, our Mary: (Re) Claiming Mary Pickford for Canada Donna R. Casella (Minnesota State University) Women in Front and Behind the Camera in Irish Cinema of the Silent Period Michele Leigh (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) Leading Ladies and the Studio Bosses: The Representation of Women in Pre-Revolutionary Russian Studio Publications Giuliana Muscio (University of Padua) Historiography of Women and the Silent Screen: Europe/US/World

Chair: Monica Dall’Asta Emiliana Losma (Independent Researcher) Divas: Goddess of the silent screen Aviva Dove-Viebahn (Arizona State University) From Pauline’s Perils to Charlie’s Angels (and Back Again): Tracing the Past and Future of ‘Serial Queens’ Anna Gardner (La Trobe University) Colleen Moore: Star Auteur? Monica Dall’Asta (University of Bologna) Obscured by starlight: Women Comedians and sporting actresses in early Italian cinema

Chair: Wendy Haslem Bindu Menon Mannil (Delhi University) Chronicles of a Disappearance: Caste and Gender in South Indian Silent Screen Wendy Haslem (University of Melbourne) Spectral Colours, Temporalities and Sensation in Early Cinema

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Roundtable plenary with NFSA & NZFA: 5.20 – 6.10 pm

Gender and the Archives

Minette Hillyer (Victoria University of Wellington), Mark Sweeney (NZFA), Meg Labrum (NFSA), Helen Tully (NFSA), Deb Verhoeven (Deakin University)

Conference Dinner: 7:30pm onwards

Wednesday 2 October Registration: 9 – 9:30am

Keynote Address: 9.30

Hilary Hallet, Columbia University

The Rise of Early Hollywood

Morning Tea 10:30 – 11am Session 5: 11 – 1pm

5A: Doubles, copies, clones: reproducing women in early film

Room 1

5B: The subversions of language and sound

Room 2

5C: Drama and Documentation

Room 3

Chair: Mary Ann Doane Jeannette Delamoir (CQUniversity) All the Mary Pickfords Lisa Bode (University of Queensland) ‘Kisses on the screen!’: Silent Screen Actresses and the ‘Double Exposure’ Film Cycle of the 1910s Rachel Joseph (Arizona State University) Lulu’s Boxes: Screened Stages, Theatricality, and the Emergence of Monstrous Reproducibility

Chair: Elena Mosconi Maree Macmillan (RMIT) The many voices of Lulu: auditory interpretations of Louise Brooks’s Lulu in Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) Jon Dale (University of Adelaide) Active in Visibility: Ewa Partum’s Concrete Poetics Tessa Dwyer (University of Melbourne) Female Stars, Foreign Accents and Unruly Voices: The Transition

Chair: Jane Gaines Barbara Evans (York University) A Shetland Romance: The Films of Jenny Brown Emma Sandon (Birkbeck, University of London) Cape to Cairo Denise McKenna (University of Southern California) Beatriz Michelena and Alternative Western Mythologies Kristin N. Harper

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in Pandora’s Box Paul Young (Vanderbilt University) Starring Mary Pickford as Unity: STELLA MARIS and the Early Classical Paradigm  

from Silence to Sound Yiman Wang (University of California, Santa Cruz) Speaking in a “Forked Tongue”: Anna May Wong’s Linguistic Cosmopolitanism

(New York University) “Sweet Belles Jangled, Out of Tune”: Filming Female Hysteria and War Madness in The Great War

Lunch 1 – 2pm, Hub Seminar Room Women and Film History International meeting convened by Michele Leigh. All

welcome to attend Session 6: 2 – 3pm

6A: New Materials for Feminist Film History

Room 2

6B: Focus: Asian Cinema

Room 3

Chair: Susan Potter Emily O’Connor (Independent Scholar & Artist) The Killing of Sister George II Whitney Monaghan (Monash University) A “polyphonic play of features”: Bela Belazs, Louise Brooks and Tumblr

Chair: TBA Sean O’Reilly (Harvard University) Screening History: Japan’s First Bakumatsu Boom and the History Film, 1925-1945 Danny Ben-Moshe (Deakin University) Bollywood’s First Women: The Jewish Stars of India’s Silent Era

3 – 4pm Concluding Remarks Conference venue: The conference will predominantly be held on the VCAM/Southbank Campus of the University of Melbourne. We have secured use of Federation Hall, VCAM’s premier lecture theatre, as well as Cinema 2 lecture theatre and the Hub Seminar Room. Registration will be held in the foyer, and we will have location signs in place to make navigation of an unfamiliar campus as easy as possible. Maps and the general location of the Southbank Campus can be found here: http://maps.unimelb.edu.au/southbank Please note that for the keynote Miengunyah lecture by Professor Mary Ann Doane we will move to the Elizabeth Murdoch theatre on the Parkville Campus, an easy tram ride up the road. http://maps.unimelb.edu.au/parkville Please also note that Public Transport Victoria have introduced a new ticketing system in the last year called Myki, which cannot be bought on trams. Information on how to purchase a

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Myki card, which can then be loaded up with money for all public transport, please see http://ptv.vic.gov.au/tickets/myki/buying-your-myki/  Film Program Notes All screenings take place in Federation Hall at the Victorian College of Arts and Music.

Screening 1: 6 – 7.15pm, Sunday 29 September 2013 NZFA: Venus of the South Seas, dir. James R. Sullivan, New Zealand Dominion Productions, 1924, 47 mins. A story of girls and pearls, love and adventures, mermaids and wonders, of the South Seas. “The story concerns a lonely pearl-diver and his beautiful daughter, Shona. She is a child of nature, a goddess of the seas, and one moonlight night romance comes to her when she swims out to a strange boat and meets the hero. A rival pearl pirate, on the death of the old man, attempts villainy, but the young man pits himself against him, and, naturally, all ends well. Playing opposite Miss Kellerman is Mr Norman French, who does excellent acting, and makes a manly hero all through.” — Evening Post review, June 7, 1924. Australian born Annette Kellerman was a champion diver and swimmer who made headlines in 1907 when she was arrested in Boston for wearing a one piece bathing suit. In Hollywood she starred in Neptune’s Daughter (1914) and A Daughter of the Gods (1916). Venus of the South Seas is Kellerman’s only surviving feature film. Preceded by: Pathé News No. 67, 1924, 1.30 mins. This 1924 Fashion Review hints at the styles “in vogue” at the time of filming and predicts ideas for your wardrobe in 1950. [Hamilton Shingle & Buster Competition], 1926, 3 mins. Fragments from the haircut competition organised in conjunction with the Strand Theatre, Hamilton, to find “The Winning Cut” which was judged by public vote. An intertitle implores the audience to temper their predisposition towards criticism: “In its screening there may be a few contestants who naturally appear unused to the camera. We New Zealanders are apt to be over critical. Let us judge fairly & give the palm of applause where it is due”. [Motion Picture Bathing Beauty Contest], 1925, 1 min. Fragments, believed to be from the “Motion Picture Bathing Beauty Contest”. The contest set out to discover Auckland’s most beautiful bathing girl, with the film screening at the Grand Theatre, where voting papers were distributed to enable the audience to act as judges. Accompanied by Mauro Colombis

Screening 2: 4 – 5.40 pm. Monday 30 September 2013 NFSA: The Girl of the Bush (Franklyn Barrett, 1921), 95 min La Fee aux Fleurs (Pathe) stencilled 90 secs Accompanied by Mauro Colombis

Screening 3: 1:15 – 3.00 pm, Tuesday 1 October 2013

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NZFA: The Bush Cinderella, dir. & prod. Rudall Hayward, New Zealand, 1928, 85 mins. The Bush Cinderella was the fourth feature film produced by pioneer filmmaker Rudall Hayward. Released in 1928, the film is a mix of melodrama and high comedy. It was a runaway success with local audiences and it remains one of the great achievements of the early screen era in New Zealand. The heroine was played by Dale Austen, winner of the 1927 Miss New Zealand contest. Part of Austen’s prize was a trip to Hollywood, and a contract as a stock player at MGM. The Bush Cinderella was filmed soon after Austen’s return from Hollywood and freely cashed in on the fame of New Zealand’s beauty queen who “combines Hollywood experience and technique with a faultless photographic face” (The Sun, 27 August 1928). Hayward’s achievements with this film were due, in no small part, to the involvement of his wife Hilda. Hilda was also his creative partner and she worked side by side with him from the 1920s until the late 1930s, which makes her New Zealand’s earliest known female film pioneer. Hilda was involved in every aspect of his filmmaking, including casting, acting, editing and even processing the film. The couples’ daughter, Phillippa, appears in The Bush Cinderella as one of the Codlin children. Accompanied by Mauro Colombis.