In 1932, Jill Craigie was working as a journalist for Betty’s Paper, one of a number of ‘girls’ papers’ launched in the interwar years that targeted an audience of single working women in their late teens and early twenties.[i] Her work included writing horoscopes as ‘Professor Philastro’ and advising readers on beauty and relationships as… Continue reading
Letters, lives and archives panel – BAFTSS, St Andrew’s 16-18 April 2020
Letters, lives and archives: an epistolary approach to women’s film history With papers by Julia Eisner (KCL), Lizzie Thynne (Sussex) and Tashi Petter (QMUL) Letters and personal correspondence held in public and private collections offer a rich primary resource for film scholars, especially for research on figures who have been side-lined or marginalised in traditional… Continue reading
Doing Women’s Film and Television History conference panel
Doing Women’s Film and Television History Conference V: Forming Histories/Histories in Formation, Maynooth University, 20-22 May 2020 The many lives of Jill Craigie: socialist, feminist, film-maker, writer and ‘media personality’ The Jill Craigie: Film Pioneer project team will be presenting their collaborative research on Craigie’s career exploring what it reveals about the obstacles and opportunities experienced… Continue reading
MeCCSA conference panel
Media Interactions and Environments, University of Brighton, 8-10 January 2020 Participatory modes of film production and distribution: Jill Craigie and activist film In this panel, we foreground Craigie’s distinctive collaborative approach to film production during WWII and the post-war period, framed through her feminist and socialist politics. We foreground Craigie’s understanding of film as a… Continue reading
Making the Grade documentary – conference presentations
Lizzie Thynne presented work in progress on the project film about Jill Craigie at several conferences in 2019: BAFTSS, University of Birmingham, April Poetics and Politics of Documentary, UC Santa Cruz, May Screen, University of Glasgow, June Journal of Media Practice symposium, University of Kent, June Women’s History Network conference, LSE, September She discussed how… Continue reading
War Artists on Film: Out of Chaos – Public Talk
Tuesday 10th December, 1.15pm at The Stanley Spencer Gallery. Tickets £10 on the door on the day. Yvonne Tasker’s illustrated talk will centre on Jill Craigie’s documentary film Out of Chaos (1944) which profiles the work of war artists – including Paul Nash, Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer and Graham Sutherland – and which argues for the artist to have… Continue reading
Invisible Women? Analysing Gender and Media – Professor Yvonne Tasker’s Inaugural lecture
Wednesday 16th October 2019 – Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds Neither binary nor straightforward, this lecture argues that gender is a vital frame for media history and analysis. Bodies matter, and women’s bodies are particularly charged sites of meaning in popular media cultures. Images of women populate media culture but work by female film… Continue reading
‘I am not particularly despondent yet’: the affective life of a feminist film in post war Britain – Public Lecture
Tuesday 24 September 2019 6:30-8pm, LSE – Hosted by the Department of Gender Studies Sadie Wearing’s lecture explores the affective life of the 1951 ‘equal pay film’ made by Jill Craigie, To Be a Woman. The lecture is based on research on the production and distribution history of the film held in the UK National… Continue reading
Screen conference panel
University of Glasgow, 29 June-1 July 2019 Jill Craigie: documentary and feminist film practices The panel presents work undertaken as part of the AHRC-funded project, Jill Craigie: Film Pioneer. We explore Craigie’s film work, contextualising her career and producing both written and film responses to this body of work. Thus, the panel encompasses creative, critical… Continue reading
Making the Grade: Women Directing Documentary Past and Present
Friday 22-Saturday 23 November 2019, in partnership with Arts Institute Plymouth Directors UK (2018) reports an almost 10% decline in the number of women directing factual programming in recent years. What factors are driving this and how have individual women managed to forge careers in this sector? We will use the career of Jill… Continue reading