Film festival uncovers women’s silent voices

By Jami Makan

At a time when female directors are struggling to make it in Hollywood, a local film festival is showcasing films from the silent era, when women were pioneers in the filmmaking industry.

The Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival has organized a program of film screenings in Bellingham, featuring silent films by female directors from the early 20th century. Independent women directors flourished during that period, before getting shut out when movie studios began consolidating power and buying up small theater chains.

“Most people don’t know that women were pretty dominant in that time period,” says Cheryl Crooks, executive director of the Cascadia International Women’s

Film Festival.

Compare that to now, when research shows that women directors lack the same exposure as their male counterparts. According to a recent study by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, only four percent of directors of the 1,100 top films from 2007 to 2017 were female.

The silent film series, entitled “Visions & Voices,” features a collection of historical films by women directors that was curated by the Kino Lorber distribution company and the Library of Congress. The first installment was shown on December 2 at the Sylvia Center for the Arts in Bellingham, where films by the director Lois Weber (1879-1939) were shown. Lois Weber directed hundreds of silent films during the silent era.

“She was way ahead of the whole art form,” said Crooks. “But when studio films and the ‘talkies’ came in, she never really recovered and just got shut out in a sense.”

Upcoming screenings of additional silent films are scheduled to take place at the Mount Baker Theatre on Sunday, February 10, as well as the Firehouse Cafe on Friday, March 8.

This series is a prelude to the main Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival, which is entering its third year and is set to take place in Bellingham in mid-April. The Festival, which is currently reviewing submissions, is only one of a handful of film festivals in the world to focus solely on female directors.