Print, Online & Moving Image Publications

Introduction:

This section uses “publication” in broad terms but with a focused remit. It lists print, online and video/moving image publications, that deal specifically with the histories of women working in and around film and television making or problems of feminist historiography. Under moving-image publications we list documentaries on women filmmakers or curated collections of women’s films, accompanied by commentaries, whether on film or in accompanying print form. Such histories focus on researching women’s activities as makers, distributors, exhibitors, audiences,  publicists, critics and historians of cinema and television. The listing does not cover debates about images of women and representation, except insofar as such debates and activities become part of women’s work as makers. Similarly publications on actresses and stars are generally not included, unless such women are have a clear impact on production.

We focus on history because we believe in its significance for present practice, both as a means of learning from women’s past experiences and — by intervening in the stories that are told about the past — changing the way cinema and television are currently perceived.

Publications are listed here under their authors and include books, chapters, journal articles, encyclopaedias and entries, edited collections, online websites and blogs, and DVDs that focus on, or give access to, the histories of women as makers of film and TV.

Because feminism contests traditional histories, the works listed here may also be concerned with issues raised by feminist historiography and the new methods required both to factor gender into historical research and to decolonise film history from largely Eurocentric perspectives. Thus while the main focus of WFTHN is on women working in Britain and Ireland or on British and Irish women involved in international co-production, this section includes work about women’s film histories in different countries for what they reveal about the intersections of gender, ethnic and national cultures, and colonial inheritances that are relevant to women’s film histories wherever they are produced.

The form at the end of this listing invites you to help expand this listing of publications on the histories of women working in and around cinema and television by providing details of any print, visual or online publication that you have found useful. We especially look for more contributions concerning women’s television histories.

To ease the search for moving image publications, we have highlighted them in purple.

To ease the search for journals, we have highlighted them in green.

We are always looking for expansion of this page, so if you have any additions please scroll down to the form below where you can log any new items that would be appropriate to the page. 

Print, Online & Moving Image Publications Featuring History of Women Making Cinema & Television

Acker, Ally (1990). Filmmakers on Film. 10-Disc Collection.

______ (1991). Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, The First Hundred Years. Vol . 1. 1890s-1950s. (New York: Reel Women Media Publishing).

______ (1991). Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, The First Hundred Years. Vol . 2. 1960-2010. (New York: Reel Women Media Publishing).

Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology: Open-access, peer reviewed journal produced          by the Fembot Collective, based at Center for the Study of Women in Society at University of   Oregon. Visit Website

Altenloh, Emilie (2001 [1914]. “A Sociology of the Cinema: The Audience”. Trans. Kathleen Cross. Screen 42.3 (Autumn): 249-293.

Armatage, Kay (2002). The Girl from God’s Country: Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).

Anselmo, Diana M. (2024). “On Early Film Fangirls as Gleaned through Archival Scrapbooks.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 22.1 (Spring). Special Issue on Feminist Film/Media Now. Online at http://nrftsjournal.org/

Arnold, Sarah (2021). Gender and Early Television: Mapping Women’s Role in American and British Television (London: Bloomsbury).

Arnold, Sarah, Paul Frith, Keith M. Johnston, Carolann Madden, Zoë Viney Burgess (2023). Women in Focus: A Toolkit for Archiving Women’s Amateur Film. https://assets.uea.ac.uk/f/185167/x/adccd0228a/9_women-in-focus-brochure_sml.pdf

Arnold, Sarah and Carolann Madden (2024). ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Attending to Women’s Amateur Filmmaking Histories at the Irish Film Archive.’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 44.2: 300–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2023.2296233.

Aylett, Holly and Annie Watson (2018). “Where are the Women Directors?” UK section of report on gender equality for directors in the European film industry 2006-2013 for European Women’s Audiovisual Network. Online at  https://www.ewawomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Complete-report_compressed.pdf

Bachy, Victor (1985). “Conversations With Alice Guy.” Trans. Lois Grjebine. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Colloquium of the Institute Jean Vigo (Perpignan: Institut Jean Vigo): 31-42.

Bao, Weihong (2013). “From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüixia in Chinese Silent Cinema.” In Marina Dalquist (ed.), Exporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze (Urbana: University of Illinois Press): 187-1221.

______ (2015). Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915-1945 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Bean, Jennifer (2002). “Introduction: Towards a Feminist Historiography of Early Cinema” and “Technologies of Early Stardom and the Extraordinary Body”. In Jennifer Bean & Diane Negra (eds.), A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press): 1-26 & 404-443.

Beauchamp, Cari (1997). Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Beeston, Alix and Stefan Solomon (2023). Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (Oakland: University of California Press).

Williams, M. (2024), ‘Muriel Box’, Senses of Cinema, no. 110 https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/great-directors/box-muriel/

Bell, Melanie (2021). Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

Williams, M. (2020), “Her Word Was Her Bond: Johanna Harwood, Bond’s First Woman Screenwriter”, Gerrard, S. (Ed.) From Blofeld to Moneypenny: Gender in James Bond (Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 117-127.

Bell, Melanie and Melanie Williams (2010). British Women’s Cinema (London: Routledge).

Blaché, Alice Guy (1996) [1914]. “Woman’s Place in Photoplay Production.” In Anthony Slide (ed.),               The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché (Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press): 139-142.

Bobo, Jacqueline  (1988). “The Color Purple: Black Women as Cultural Readers.” In Deidre Pribram,                Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television (London: Verso): 90-109. Extract in John    Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994).

______ (1993). “Reading Through the Text: The Black Woman as Audience”. In Manthia Diawara (ed.), Black American Cinema (New York: Routledge, 1993): 272 – 287.

______ (1995). “Watching The Color Purple: Two Interviews” and “Black Women Reading Daughters of the Dust“.In Black Women as Cultural Readers (New York, Columbia University Press): 91-132 and  167-196. Reprint of the latter in GraemeTurner (ed.), The Film Cultures Reader (London: Routledge, 2002).

Braderman, Joan (1972). “Report: The First Festival of Women’s Films”. Online at: https://www.artforum.com/print/197207/report-the-first-festival-of-women-s-films-37498

Breidenbach, Ann (2020). “Festival Mamas Building the Women’s Club: A Case Study”. Journal of Film and Video 72.1-2: (Spring/Summer): 73-9. Online at https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.72.1-2.0021

Bridges, Melody and Cheryl Robson, eds. (2016). Silent Women, Pioneers of Cinema (Twickenham: Supernova).

Brooks, Louise  (2000). Lulu in Hollywood: Expanded Edition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Bruno, Giuliana (1984). Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press).

Bull, Sofia and Astrid Söderbergh Widding, eds. (2010). Not So Silent: Women in Cinema Before Sound (Stockholm: Stockholm University).

Burrows, Elaine (2010). “A Historical Overview of NFTVA/BFI Collection Development Policies with Regard to Gender and Nation Questions.” Framework 51.2 (Fall): 343-353.

Callahan, Vicki, ed. (2010). Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History (Michigan: Wayne State University Press).

______ (2010). “The Future of the Archive: An Interview with Lynn Hershman Leeson”. In                                Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History” (Michigan: Wayne State University Press): 418-429.

Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture and Media Studies: A forum for scholarship and debate on feminism, culture, and media studies, especially conjunctions of gender, race, class, and sexuality with audiovisual culture; new histories and theories of film, television, video, and digital media.  Founded in 1976. Visit Website

Casella, Donna (2009). “What Women Want: The Complex World of Dorothy Arzner and Her Cinematic Women.” Framework 50.1-2 (Fall): 235-270.

Cobb, Shelley. (2014) Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

______  (2020) “What about the Men? Gender inequality data and the rhetoric of inclusion in the US and UK film industries.” Journal of British Cinema and Television. 17. 1: 112-135. (doi:10.3366/jbctv.2020.0510).

Cobb, Shelley and Williams, Linda Ruth (2020) “Histories of now: listening to women in British film.” Women’s History Review. 29. 5: 890-902. (doi:10.1080/09612025.2019.1703542).

______ (2020) ‘Gender Equality in British Film-making: Research, Targets, Change’. In, Liddy, Susan (ed.) Women in the International Film Industry (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan): 97-110. (doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39070-9_6).

 ______ (2023) “Caring, collaboration, confidence and constraint in the working lives of older women filmmakers in the UK.” In, Liddy, Susan (ed.) Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries: ‘Falling off a cliff’ (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan): 61-76. (doi:10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_4).

Cobb, Shelley and Wreyford, Natalie (2017) “Data and responsibility: Towards a feminist methodology for producing historical data on women in the contemporary UK film industry.” Feminist Media Histories. 3. 3: 107-132. (doi:10.1525/fmh.2017.3.3.107).

______ (2021) “’Could you hire someone female or from an ethnic minority?’ Being both: black, Asian and other minority women working in British film production.” In, Saha, Anamik and Nwonka, Clive (eds.) Black British Cinema II (Goldsmiths, University of London).

Cooper, Mark Garrett (2010). Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

______ (2010). “Tackling Universal Women as a Research Problem. What Historiographic Sources Do & Don’t Tell Us About Gender in the Silent Motion Picture Studio”. Framework 51.2 (Fall): 334-342.

______ (2013). “Archive, Theatre, Ship: The Phelps Sisters Film the World”. In Monica Dall’Asta, Victoria Duckett, and Lucia Tralli (eds.), Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives (Bologna: University of Bologna) at http://wss2013.arts.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/0_RESEARCHING-WOMEN_SILENT-CINEMA.pdf

Cornea, Christine, ed. (2008).  “Introduction to In Focus: the Practitioner Interview”. Cinema Journal 47: 2 (Winter): 117 – 121.

D’Acci, Julie (1994). Defining Women: Television and the Case of Cagney & Lacey (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press.

Dahlquist, Marina, ed. (2013). Exporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press).

Dall’Asta, Monica (ed.), (2008). Non Solo Dive: Pioniere Del Cinema Italiano (Bologna: Cineteca Bologna).

______ (2010). “On Frieda Klug, Pearl White, and Other Traveling Women Film Pioneers”. Framework 51.2. (Fall): 310-323.

______ (2010). “What It Means to Be a Woman: Theorizing Feminist Film History Beyond the Essentialism/Constructionism Divide”. In Sofia Bull and Astrid Söderbergh Widding (eds.),  Not So Silent: Women in Cinema Before Sound (Stockholm: Stockholm University).

Dall’Asta, Monica and Victoria Duckett (2013). ” Kaleidoscope: Women and Cinematic Change from the Silent Era to Now”. In Monica Dall’Asta, Victoria Duckett, and Lucia Tralli (eds.), Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives (Bologna: University of Bologna) at http://wss2013.arts.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/0_RESEARCHING-WOMEN_SILENT-CINEMA.pdf or http://amsacta.unibo.it/3827/.

Dall’Asta, Monica and Jane M. Gaines (2015). “Constellations: When Past and Present Collide in Feminist Film History”. In Christine Gledhill and Julia Knight (eds.),  Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future (Urbana: University of Illinois Press): 13-25.

Damiens, Antoine (2020). “Film Festivals of the 1970s and the Subject of Feminist Film Studies: Collaborations and Regimes of Knowledge Production”. Journal of Film and Video 72.1-2: (Spring/Summer): 21-32.

Deren, Maya (2001). “An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film.” In Bill Nichols (ed.), Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde (Berkeley, University of California Press).

Dixon, Bryony (2010). “Women’s Film History Project: Issues of Transnationalism”. Framework 51.2 (Fall): 304-309.

Duckett, Victoria (2015). Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: Performance and Silent Film (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

European Parliament Briefing, 2019. “The place of women in European film productions: Fighting the celluloid ceiling.”  Online at: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/633145/EPRS_BRI(2019)633145_EN.pdf

Everett, Eldon K. (1973). “The Great Grace Cunard-Francis Ford Mystery”. Classic Film Collector      (Summer): 22-25.

Feminist Media Histories: A journal examining the historical role gender has played in varied media technologies, and documents women’s engagements with these media in all forms.  Published and online access. Visit Website

Feminist Media Studies: A transnational and transdisciplinary journal, looking for contributions from feminist researchers in the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions.  Published and online access. Visit Website

Förster, Annette (2005). Histories of Fame and Failure. Adriënne Solser, Musidora, Nell Shipman: Women Acting and Directing in The Netherlands, France and North America (Utrecht: Utrecht University).

Förster, Annette and Eva Warth (1999). “Feminist Approaches to Early Film History: An Overview”. Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiendenis 2.1: 114-128.

Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey (1995). Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary.     Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Frank, Stef (2012). “”Contextualizing The Red Lantern.” In Stef Frank (ed.), The Red Lantern, Nazimova, and the Boxer Rebellion (Brussels: Royal Belgian Film Archive): 4-11.

Francke, Lizzie (1994). Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood (London: BFI).

Gaines, Jane M. (2001). Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era (Chicago: University of   Chicago Press).

______ (2002). “Of Cabbages and Authorship.” In Jennifer Bean and Diane Negra (eds.), A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press): 88-118.

______ (2004). “Film History and the Two Presents of Feminist Film Theory”. Cinema Journal 44.1: 113-         117.

______ (2010). “World Women: What Silent-Era Circulating Film Prints Tell Us about Two Continent Careers”. Framework 51.2 (Fall): 283-303.

______ (2012). “Anonymities: Uncredited and Unknown in Early Cinema”. In André Gaudreault, Nicolas Dulac, and Santiago Hidalgo (eds.), A Companion to Early Cinema (West Sussex: Willey-Blackwell): 443-459.

______ (2012). “The Ingenuity of Genre and the Genius of Women”. In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Gender Meets Genre In Postwar Cinemas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press): 15-28.

______ (2013). “Wordlessness, To Be Continued . . .’ In In Monica Dall’Asta, Victoria Duckett, and Lucia Tralli (eds.), Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives (Bologna: University of Bologna) at http://wss2013.arts.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/0_RESEARCHING-WOMEN_SILENT-CINEMA.pdf or http://amsacta.unibo.it/3827/.

______ (2016). “On Not Narrating the History of Feminism and Film.” Feminist Media Histories: 2.2. At http://fmh.ucpress.edu/content/2/2/6.full.pdf+html

______ (2017). “What Was ‘Women’s Work’ in the Silent Film Era?” In Kristin Hale, Dijana Jelaca, E. Ann Kaplan, and Patrice Petro (eds.), Routledge Companion To Cinema and Gender (New York: Routledge): 266-278.

______ (2018). Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries? (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

Gaines, Jane M., Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. (2013). Women Film Pioneers Project (New York: Center for Digital Research and Scholarship), Columbia University Libraries. At http://cdrs.columbia.edu/

Genders: Essays and discussions of gender and sexuality in relation to social, political, artistic, and economic concerns in addition to cross-cultural analysis of contemporary gender issues.  Published in print 1988 through 1993.  Online version subsequently but no longer available.  Visit Website

Gledhill, Christine (2007). “Reframing Women in 1920s British Cinema: The Case of Violet Hopson and Dinah Shurey”. Journal of British Cinema and Television 4.1: 1-17.

______ et. al. (2010). “Dossier: Transnationalising Women’s Film History.” Framework 51.2 (Fall): 275-357.

Gledhill, Christine and Gillian Swanson, eds. (1996). Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

Gledhill, Christine and Julia Knight, eds. (2015). Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

Gramann, Karola, et. al. eds. (2009). Language of Love: Asta Nielsen, Her Films, Her Cinema 1910-1933 (Vienna: Filmarchiv Austria).

Green, Pamela B. and Joan Simon (2018). Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché. (Col./B&W; 35mm Film/DVD, 103 mins.).

Hallett, Hilary A. (2013). Go West Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press).

______ (2018). “Melodrama and the Making of Hollywood”. In Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound (New York: Columbia University Press): 115-133.

Hansen, Miriam (1990). “Early Cinema: Whose Public Sphere?” In Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (eds.), Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI): 228–234.

______ (1991). Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge, MA:, Harvard University Press).

______ (1991). “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship”. In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (London: Routledge): 259-282.

______ (2000). “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Cinema as      Vernacular          Modernism.” Film Quarterly 54:1: 10-22.

Haralovich, Mary Beth and Lauren Rabinovitz (1999). Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays (Durham: Duke University Press).

Harper, Sue (2000). Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. Part II “Women’s Work.” (London: Continuum): 155-232.

Harris, Kristine (1997). “The New Woman Incident: Cinema, Scandal, and Spectacle in 1935 Shanghai”. In Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu (ed.), Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press): 277-302.

Harrod, Mary and Katarzyna Paszkiewicz, eds. (2018). Women Do Genre in Film and Television (London: Routledge).

Hastie, Amelie (2002). “Circuits of Memory and History: The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blaché.” In Jennifer Bean and Diane Negra (eds.), A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press): 29-59.

______ (2007). Cupboards of Curiosity: Women, Recollection and Film History (Durham: Duke University Press).

Hastie, Amelie and Shelly Stamp, eds., (2006). Women and the Silent Screen, special issue of Film History 18.2.

Heftberger, Adelheid and Karen Pearlman (eds.), (2018). “Women at the Editing Table: Revising Soviet History of the 1920s and 1930s.” Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 6 (August). Online at https://doi.org/10.17892/app.2018.0006.

Hertzog, Carlotte Cornelia, and Jane Gaines (1996). “Puffed Sleeves Before Tea-Time”. In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (London: Routledge): 74-91.

Hesford, Victoria, and Lisa Diedrich (2014). “Experience, Eco, Event: Theorizing Feminist Histories, Historicising Feminist Theory.” Feminist Theory 15.2: 103-117.

Hill, Erin (2016). Never Done: A History of Women’s Work in Media Production (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press).

Holliday, Wendy (1995). “Hollywood’s Modern Women: Screenwriting, Work Culture, and Feminism, 1910-1940”. Unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University.

Hori, Hikari (2005). “Migration and Transgression: Female Pioneers of Documentary Filmmaking in Japan.” Asian Cinema: 16.1:: 89-97.

Heftberger, Adelheid and Karen Pearlman (2018). “Women at the Editing Table: Revising Soviet History of the 1920s and 1930s.” Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 6 (August). Online at https://doi.org/10.17892/app.2018.0006.

Hunter, Aaron and Martha Shearer (eds.), Women and New Hollywood: Gender, Creative Labor, and 1970s American Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press).

Hutchinson, Pamela, et. al. (2019). Early Women Filmmakers: 1911-1940. 4-disc collection (BFI).

Jacob, Clarissa J. (2015) “Women & Film: The First Feminist Film Magazine.” Feminist Media Histories 1.1. (Winter)): 153-162.

Johnston, Claire (1975). “Feminist Politics and Film History”. Screen 16.3 (Autumn): 115-124.

______ (1975). The Work of Dorothy Arzner: Towards A Feminist Criticism (London: BFI).

Journal of Film and Video 72.1-2 (Spring/Summer) 2020. Special Issue, Film and Media Festivals in        Academia. (University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video                 Association). At: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jfilmvideo.72.issue-1-2

Kamleitner, Katharina (2020). On Women’s Film Festivals: histories, circuits, feminisms, futures, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow. At: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/80237

Kaplan, E. Ann (1983). Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Routledge).

______ (2012). “Troubling Genre/Reconstructing Gender”. In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Gender Meets                Genre in Contemporary Cinemas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

Klinger, Barbara (1997). “Film History Terminable and Interminable: Recovering the Past in Reception Studies”. Screen 38.2 (Summer): 107-128.

Knight, Julia (2012). “Archiving, Distribution, and Experimental Moving Image Histories”. The Moving Image 12.1 (Spring): 65–86.

Koszarski, Richard (1977). “The Years Have Not Been Kind to Loise Weber”. In Karyn Kay and Gerald Peary (eds.), Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology (New York: Dutton): 146-152.

Krämer, Peter (2009). “When ‘Hanoi Jane’ Conquered Hollywood: Jane Fonda’s Films and Activism, 1977-81”. In James Chapman, Mark Glancy and Sue Harper (eds.), The New Film History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan): 104-118.

Kuhn, Annette w. Susanna Radstone, eds. (1990). The Women’s Companion to International Film (London: Virago).

Lant, Antonia w. Ingrid Periz, eds. (2006). Red Velvet Seat: Women’s Writing on the First Fifty Years of Cinema (London: Verso).

Law, Kar (2011). “In Search of Esther Eng: Border-Crossing Pioneer in Chinese Language Filmmaking”. In Lingzhen Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts, trans. Chris tong (New York: Columbia University Press): 313-329.

Lenk, Sabine and Alison McMahan (1999). “À la recherché d’objects filmiques non identifiés: Autour de l’oeuvre d’ Alice Guy-Blaché“. Archives81 (aôut): pp. missing.

Lepage, Marquise (1996). Le jardin oublié: La vie et l’oeuvre d’Alice Guy Blaché. Documentary. (Col/B&W; 35mm Film/DVD; 53 mins.).

Liddy, Susan (eds) (2023). Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries: Falling Off a Cliff? (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan).

Mahar, Karen Ward (2010). ‘True Womanhood in Hollywood: Gendered Business Strategies and the Rise and Fall of the Woman Filmmaker, 1896-1928″. Enterprise & History 2: 72-110.

______ (2006). Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press).

MacMahon, Alison (2002). Alice Guy-Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (New York: Continuum).

Madden, Carolann, Sarah Arnold, Kasandra O’Connell (2025). ‘Lost in Digitisation: The Film Reel and the Craft of Women’s Home Movie Making’. Quarterly Review of Film & Video 42.6: 1454–1471. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2025.2518361.

MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture: A non-hierarchical journal open to multivalent feminist expression, research & critique of visual culture. MAI offers its readers intersectional feminist criticism of global visual culture. We publish creative and academic research on women in art and media. We are a collective of scholars, artists, writers, activists and thinkers who challenge patriarchy while celebrating women’s creativity and achievements. MAI encourages authors to consider gender in film & television in the context of feminism alongside many other aspects of an audiovisual text. We publish research results and other forms of critical commentary on both fiction and factual film & television. Our writers’ approaches range from production studies to debates on audience and representation. We are interested in essays and other pieces of writing that examine, challenge and make sense of the complex and often contradictory gender politics at work in film & television of today and the past. Visit Website

Martin, Angela (1998). “Gilda Didn’t Do Any of Those Things You’ve Been Losing Sleep Over!” In E.Ann Kaplan (ed.), Women in Film Noir  (London, BFI): 200-228.

Martin, Angela (2008). “Refocusing Authorship in Women’s Filmmaking”. In Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (Malden, Mss.: Blackwell): 127-134.

Martin, Ann, and Virginia Clark (1987). “Introduction”. In What Women Wrote: Scenarios 1912-1929 (Frederic, Md.: University Publications of America, Cinema Microfilm series).

Maule, Rosanna, ed. (2005). Women and the Silent Cinema: Methods, Approaches, Issues. Special Issue of Cinémas 16.1.

Maule, Rosanna and Catherine Russell, eds. (2005). Cinephilia and Women’s Cinema in the 1920s.       Special Issue of Framework 46.1.

Mayne, Judith (1994). Directed by Dorothy Arzner (Bloomington: Indian University Press).

______ (2017). “Scandale! Dorothy Arzner in Paris”. Film Quarterly (12 July). At                 https://filmquarterly.org/2017/07/12/scandale-dorothy-arzner-in-paris/

Mayer, Sophie (2009). Sally Potter: A Cinema of Love (London: Wallflower).

McHugh, Kathleen (2009). “The World and the Soup: Historicizing Media Feminisms in Transnational Contexts.” Camera Obscura 72: 110-151

McKenna, Denise (2008). “The City That Made the Pictures Move: Gender, Labor, and the Film Industry in Los Angeles, 1908-1917. Unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University.

McKernan, Luke (2015). “Searching for Mary Murillo.” In Christine Gledhill and Julia Knight (eds.), Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future (Urbana: University of Illinois Press): 78-92.

McMahan Alison (2002). Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of Cinema (New York: Continuum).

______ (2004). “Madame Blaché in America: Director, Producer, Studio Owner”. In Joan Simon (ed.), Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer (New Haven: Yale University press): 47-76.

Mejiri, Ouissal (2010). “Women in Egyptian Silent Cinema: the 1920s Pioneers”. Unpublished paper delivered at “Women and the Silent Screen: VI”. Bologna: Manifattura delle arti.

Miguel, Ángel (2000). Mimí Derba (Mexico: Archívo Filmico Agrasánchez/Filmotec de la UNAM.

Minor, Laura. “Alma’s (Not) Normal: Normalising Working-Class Women in/on BBC TV Comedy.” Journal of British Cinema and Television. 20. 2: 137-161. https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2023.0665

______ (2024) Reclaiming Female Authorship in UK Television Comedy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Moon, Krystyn R. (2012). “The Creation of The Red Lantern: American Orientalism and the Beginning of      the 20th Century”. In Stef Frank (ed.), The Red Lantern, Nazimova, and the Boxer Rebellion           (Brussels: Royal Belgian Film Archive): 45-58.

Morey, Anne (1997). “‘Have You the Power?’: The Palmer Photoplay Corporation and the Film       Viewer/Author in the 1920s. Film History 9: 300-319.

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Mulvey, Laura (2004). “Looking At the Past From the Present: Rethinking Feminist Film Theory of the1970s”. Signs 31: 1286-1292.

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Pearlman, Karen (2016). Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive Film Editing (London: Routledge).

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Pearlman, Karen and J. Sutton (2022). “Reframing the director: distributed creativity in filmmaking practice.” In Mette Hjort and Ted Nannicelli (eds.), A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell): 86-105.

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Pierce, David (1997). “Forgotten Faces: Why some of Our Cinema Heritage Is Part of the Public Domain”. Film History 19: 125-143.

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Ramírez-Soto, Elizabeth, Isabel Seguí and Marina Cavalcanti Tedesco, eds. (2023). “Guerrilla Archiving: Documents for a Feminist History of Latin-American Cinemas”. Studies in Spanish and Latin Amrican Cinemas. 20.3: 139-144. Special Issue, dedicated to Ana M. López. 

Richardson, Dorothy (1998 [1927-1933]). “Continuous Performance”. In James Donald, Anne Friedberg and Laura Marcus (eds.), Close Up, 1927 – 1933: Cinema and Modernism (London: Cassell): 150-210.

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Schlüpmann, Heide (1994). “Re-reading Nietzsche through Kracauer: Towards a Feminist Perspective on Film History”. Film History 6: 80-92.

______ (2010). The Uncanny Gaze: The Drama of Early German Cinema. Trans. Omga Pollman. (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press).

______ (2012). “27 May 1911: Asta Nielsen Secures Unprecedented Artistic Control”. In Jennifer M. Kapczynski and Michael D. Richardson (eds.), A New History of German Cinema (Rochester: Camden House): 44-50.

______ (2013). “An Alliance between History and Theory”. In Monica Dall’Asta, Victoria Duckett, and Lucia Tralli (eds.), Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives (Bologna: University of Bologna): 13-26.  At http://wss2013.arts.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/0_RESEARCHING-WOMEN_SILENT-CINEMA.pdf

Schlüpmann, Heide and Andrea Haller (2018). Zu Wort kommen/Speaking Up (Frankfurt: Remake Women’s Film Days 1918, A Publication).

Schmidt, Christel (2003). “Preserving Picford: The Mary Pickford Collection and the Library of Congress”. The Moving Image 3.1: 59-81.

______ (2012). Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress and Unvesity of Kentucky Press).

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Slater, Thomas J. (2002). “June Mathis: A Woman Who Spoke through Silents”. In Charles Musser and Robert Sklar (eds.), American Silent Film: Discovering Marginalized Voices (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press): 201-216. Reprint from Griffithiana 18.53 (May 1995): 133-155.

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______ (1996). The Silent Feminists: America’s First Women Directors (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press).

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______ (2012). “Early Women Filmmakers: The Real Numbers.” Film History 24.1: 114-121

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Smyth, J.E. (2018). Nobody’s Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Smyth, Sarah Louise, (2020). Postfeminism, Ambivalence and the Mother in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011). Film Criticism. 44. 1.

_____ (2021). “I Do Not Know That I Find Myself Anywhere”: The British Heritage Film and Spaces of Intersectionality in Amma Asante’s Belle (2013). In Media Crossroads Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen Cultures. Massood, PJ., Matos, AD. and Wojcik, PR. (eds). (Durham, NC: Duke University Press): 195- 205.

_____ (2023). Nora, Julie, Julia: Legacies of Older Women in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia (2009). In Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries Falling off a Cliff. Liddy, Susan (eds). (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan): 187- 205.

Smyth, Sarah Louise, and Marghitu, Stefania (2024). “Introduction: Women’s Authorship and Adaptation in Contemporary Television.” New Review of Film and Television Studies. 22. 1. [special issue on women’s authorship and adaptation in contemporary television].

Stacey, Jackie (1996). ” Feminine Fascinations: Forms of Identification in Star-Audience Relations”. In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (London: Routledge): 141-163.

Staiger, Janet (2013). “‘Because I Am a Woman’: Thinking Identity and Agency for Historiography”. Film History 25.1: 205-214.

Stamp, Shelley (2000). Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture After the Nickelodeon (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

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______ (2006). “Presenting the Smalleys: ‘Collaboration in Authorship and Direction’”. Film               History 18.2: 119-128.

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______ (2010). “‘Exit Flapper, Enter Woman’: Or Lois Weber in Jazz Age Hollywood”. Framework 51.2           (Fall); 358-357.

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______ (2015). Lois Weber in Early Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press).

______ (2018). Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers. 6-disc DVD collection and accompanying booklet. (New York: Kino Lorber).

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Stewart, Jacqueline Najuma (2005). Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity (Berkeley, University of California Press).

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Steedman, Carolyn (2002). Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press).

Sturtevant, Victoria (2009). A Great Big Girl Like Me: The Films of Marie Dressler (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

Thomas, Rosie (2013). “Not Quite (Pearl) White: Fearless Nadia, Queen of the Stunts”. In Marina Dalquist (ed.), Exporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze (Urbana: University of Illinois Press): 160-186.

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Wei, Louisa (2011). “Women’s Trajectories in Chinese and Japanese Cinemas: A Chronological Overview”. In Kate E. Taylor (ed.), decalog: On East Asian Filmmakers (Brighton, Walfower Press: 13-44.

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_____ (2017). Female Stars of British Cinema: The Women in Question (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

_____ (2025). “A film-maker not a note-taker: a roundtable discussion on the craft of script supervision.” Open Screens. 7. 1. https://www.openscreensjournal.com/article/id/18267/

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