Cinema’s First Nasty Women – film screening

“Cinema’s First Nasty Women” is a project curated by Laura Horak, Maggie Hennefeld and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, who have scoured film archives around the world to uncover silent women’s films. Their research aimed not only to undermine the belief that the canon of silent cinema consists exclusively of productions by male filmmakers but also to indicate that women found themselves in the realities of trick films, slapstick gags, or farcical comedies in an original way. The artists filled these conventions with their own energy, anger, transgression, rebellion, and perverse mockery, thereby pushing the boundaries of socially acceptable female behavior at that time. The characters created by the comedians in these films behave really “nasty” – they organize workers’ strikes, bake inedible desserts, lead to the destruction of apartments, and sometimes they even electrocute the police. Most of all, they play with gender roles – they embody and act out male identities, thereby happily blurring gender divisions and sexual norms.

During the meeting, we will watch an hour-long selection of 99 films from the “Cinema’s First Nasty Women” collection, which has not been shown in Poland before, which is divided into four thematic sets: Disastrous Domestics & Anarchic Tomboys, Queens of Destruction, Gender Rebels, Female Tricksters.

Ewa Opałka will give a short lecture before the screening

Project website: https://wfpp.columbia.edu/cinemas-first-nasty-women/
Trailer: https://youtu.be/dJfUrNj_7k4