Program I: “Bees and Roses: Chinese Women Directors and Silent Era US-Chinese Film Connections”
Kim K. Fahlstedt, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stockholm University Media Studies; author, Chinatown Film Culture: The Appearance of Cinema in San Francisco’s Chinese Neighborhood (Rutgers University Press, 2020).
Yongchun Fu, Associate Professor, School of Media and Design, Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University; author, The Early Transnational Chinese Cinema Industry (Routledge, 2019).
Xuelei Huang, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Edinburgh; author, Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe (BRILL, 2014).
Daoxin Li, Professor and Historian of Chinese Cinema, Associate Dean of School of the Arts, Peking University; author, History of Chinese Film Culture: 1905–2004 (Peking University Press, 2005).
Gregory Yee Mark, Professor Emeritus, Department of Ethnic Studies, California State University, Sacramento; grandnephew of Marion E. Wong, creator of The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916), and grandson of Violet Wong, heroine of The Curse of Quon Gwon.
Jing Peng, MA in Film and Media Studies, Columbia University.
Cordelia Siporin, Professor, Becton College of Arts and Sciences, Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Yan-fei Song, PhD Candidate, Beijing Normal University.
Yiman Wang, Professor, Film & Digital Media, University of California—Santa Cruz; author, Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Hollywood (University of Hawaii Press, 2013).
S. Louisa Wei, Associate Professor, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong; author, Legend of Esther Eng: The Transoceanic Film and Female Pioneers; director, Golden Gate Girls (2014) and Havana Divas (2019).
Program II: “Founding Mothers: Women Filmmakers of Early Soviet Documentary”
Daria Ezerova, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
Lilya Kaganovsky, Professor of Slavic, Comparative Literature, and Media & Cinema Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; author, Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2013).
Anastasia Kostina, PhD candidate, Film & Media Studies & Slavic Languages and Literature, Yale University.
John MacKay, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Film Studies, Yale University; author, Dziga Vertov: Life and Work (Academic Studies Press, 2018).
Josh Malitsky, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, Director of the Center for Documentary Research and Practice, Indiana University; author, Post-Revolution Non-Fiction Film: Building the Soviet and Cuban Nations (Indiana University Press, 2013).
Natalie Ryabchikova, School of Design, National Research University “Higher School of Economics.”
Oksana Sarkisova, Research Fellow at Blinken OSA Archive at Central European University, Director of Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
Raisa Sidenova, Lecturer in Film Theory, Newcastle University.
Program III: “Starting Something: Alice Guy Blaché and Early Cinema, from Sound and Color to Studio Production”
Clara Auclair, PhD Candidate, University of Rochester/Université Paris-Diderot; author, “Thinking with Provenance: Drawing Trajectories in the Francis Doublier Collection,” in Joanne Bernardi, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Tami Williams and Joshua Yumibe, eds., Provenance and Early Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2021).
Martin Barnier, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Paris, France; author, Bruits, cris, musiques de films. Les projections avant 1914 (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), and Une brève histoire du cinéma (1895–2015) (with Laurent Jullier, Pluriel, 2017).
Manohla Dargis, Co-chief Film Critic for The New York Times; author of “Overlooked No More: Alice Guy Blaché, the World’s First Female Filmmaker” (The New York Times, September 6, 2019).
Allison Farrell, MA Candidate in English: Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Jane Gaines, Professor of Film, Columbia University; author, Pink Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries? (University of Illinois Press, 2018).
André Gaudreault, Professor of Film Studies, Université de Montréal; Canada Research Chair in Cinema and Media Studies; director of the TECHNES International Research Partnership on Cinema Technology; author, The End of Cinema? (with Philippe Marion, 2015 [2013]) and Le Récit cinématographique (with François Jost, 1990 and 2017).
Wafa Ghermani, PhD in Film History, Université de la Sorbonne-Paris III/Université Jean Moulin-Lyon III; Cinémathèque française, Paris, France.
Marie Kondrat, Research and Teaching Assistant of Comparative Literature, Université de Genève/Université de la Sorbonne-Paris III; author, “Is There a Time for Alice Guy?” (Contemporary Art, 2018).
Richard Koszarski, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University; Historian, Barrymore Film Center, Fort Lee, NJ; author, Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff (Rutgers University Press, 2008).
Kiki Loveday, PhD Candidate, University of California, Santa Cruz; author, “Sister Acts: Victorian Porn, Lesbian Drag, and Queer Reproduction” (Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 2019).
Catel Muller, award-winning French comic book artist and illustrator; author of Kiki de Montparnasse (with José-Louis Bocquet, Casterman, 2007), Joséphine Baker (with José-Louis Bocquet, Casterman, 2016), and Alice Guy (with José-Louis Bocquet, forthcoming).
Cathy Palumbo, Producer, ARTE TV; Alice Guy, Pioneer of the 7th Art, Forgotten by History (2021).
Céline Ruivo, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Belgian Interuniversity and Interdisciplinary Project EOS B-magic, Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium); former Director of Film Collections, Cinémathèque française; PhD graduate, Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Ariel Schweitzer, Film Historian; Film Critic for Les Cahiers du cinéma; Professor, Paris VIII/Tel Aviv University; author, Le Nouveau cinéma israélien (Paris, 2013; Tel Aviv, 2017).
Aurore Spiers, PhD Candidate, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago; editorial contributor (France) to the Women Film Pioneers Project.
Kim Tomadjoglou, Independent Curator, 2019 LC Kluge Fellow; author, “Archival Object or Object Lesson: Bricolage as Process and as Concept in the Edmundo Padilla Collection,” in Joanne Bernardi, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Tami Williams and Joshua Yumibe, eds., Provenance and Early Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2021).
Tami Williams, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; author, Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations (University of Illinois Press, 2014), co-editor, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma/What is Cinema? by Germaine Dulac (Light Cone, 2019).
Program IV: “Breakthroughs: What Can Digital Humanities Tell Us That We Didn’t Know?”
Sarah Blankfort Clothier, Manager, AFI Catalog, American Film Institute; Project director, “Women They Talk About.”
Sarah-Mai Dang, Postdoctoral Researcher, Media Studies, Philipps University Marburg; Project director, “The Aesthetics of Access. Visualizing Research on Women in Film History.”
Jeffrey Klenotic, Associate Professor, Communication Arts, University of New Hampshire, Manchester; Research director, Mapping Movies.
Kate Saccone, graduate student, Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image, University of Amsterdam; Project Manager, Women Film Pioneers Project.
Kennington Bioscope Musicians
London-Based Kennington Bioscope Musicians in this program
Costas Fotopoulos works internationally as a concert and silent film pianist, and as a composer and arranger for film, the stage, and the concert hall. He performs live improvisations to silent films at BFI Southbank, which features numerous films screened at the London Film Festival. In addition to his regular performances at Kennington Bioscope, Costas accompanies silents for the Barbican Centre and the Prince Charles Cinema. Costas has accompanied films at the Walter Reade Theater in New York, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Pordenone, Italy), and at festivals in Poland and in Greece. www.costasfotopoulos.com
Lillian Henley is the composer and an associate artist of the highly acclaimed theatre company “1927.” She recently composed the music for Pride & Prejudice by the Regents Open Air Theatre Co. She is a silent film accompanist and was selected to take part in the 2013 Pordenone Masterclass Series for silent film musicians.
Australian native pianist, composer, and improviser Meg Morley works within various artistic genres (film/silent film, contemporary dance/ballet, contemporary jazz ensembles/solo piano). She has received various composition commissions from international festivals and institutions, and in 2018 was deemed an “Exceptional Talent” by Arts Council England. www.megmorleymusic.com
Colin Sell is a pianist/MD/composer for theatre and radio drama, and regularly accompanies the likes of Barry Cryer in cabaret, as well as himself in his one-person show Clueless at the Keys. He has accompanied silent films in many parts of the UK and is the much-maligned pianist on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. He has a regular annual gig performing at the Old Bailey (Court no. 1) and recently accompanied a gouzhong player at Sadler’s Wells.
Born in Aotearoa, currently living in London, John Sweeney plays for silent movies in the UK and Europe.
Guest Accompanist:
Andrew Earle Simpson is an acclaimed composer of opera, silent film, orchestral, chamber, choral, dance, and vocal music based in Washington, DC. One of America’s foremost silent film accompaniments, he has performed across the United States, Europe, and South America. Andrew is Resident Film Accompanist at the National Gallery of Art and a regularly featured accompanist at the Library of Congress. His silent film scores have been broadcast on the Turner Classic Movies Channel, and his silent film piano and chamber scores are available on DVD/Blu-ray (Kino Lorber, Flicker Alley, and other labels). Andrew is Ordinary (full) Professor and Director of the Master of Music, Stage Music Emphasis program at the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art of the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC). For more information, works lists, and recordings: andrewesimpson.com
Accompanist for A Comedy of Errors (Program III), screening June 4
Composer, playwright, performer, and teacher AJ Layague’s theater and multimedia works have been performed internationally at the Colony Theatre (Burbank, CA), the Ne West Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, and Frau Musica (nova) Festival (Cologne). She has recevied numerous grants and currently teaches for the Popular Music Studies Program, Oregon State University. www.layague.com