Before there was Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, an upcoming documentary about the first female filmmaker and her suspicious erasure from early film history, there was the Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP). The Columbia University Libraries recently launched this online anthology of essays about women in the early days of the film industry. The site houses overview essays to give context to the jobs women performed in early cinema — from editors to “cranks” to colorists — and several essays on the different roles they played in national cinemas, from the absence of women in the Canadian […]