Before the Credits: Feminist Genealogies and the Making of Italian Women Film Pioneers, 1914-22

​This is a half-day roundtable and screening event bringing together film, literary and feminist scholars and practitioners to address their influences on a later generation of women film pioneers through presentations, a roundtable, and a screening of a silent film ‘written’ by women and considers the following key questions:

​Following Italian unification, a cohort of self-taught professional women writers and naturalistic stage performers born in the 1850s and 1860s emerged. Many became active during the peak of the Italian film industry (1914-22) as screenwriters, directors, producers and performers, when their (conservative) views on feminism had evolved.

​Key questions:

• ​Were a cohort of Italian women writers and performers from an earlier generation symbolic and material precursors to the women film pioneers of the 1910s?

• ​How did this earlier cohort engage with feminism and the ‘woman question’ in later life, and how did this shape their relationships and networks with the women film pioneers?

• ​How does the existence of a feminist genealogy of writers and performers expand or challenge understandings of the recuperation of genealogies as a set of experiences that encourage gendered communities and women’s self-expression?

​Registration will close on Tuesday 16 June, 10:00