1911

1911 really feels like the beginning of the feature film. Oh sure, it didn’t suddenly define the output of the global film industry, but ambitious experiments from Italy, Denmark, Russia, and only very tentatively, America, sat alongside narrative, as well as plenty of non-narrative, successes and intriguing failures in the short form.

Kathy Feeley, professor of history at the University of Redlands, wrote Mary Pickford: Hollywood and the New Woman, so it makes sense that two of her picks center the film icon and pioneer, still in the early years of her career. But the rest of Kathy’s selections also paint a picture of women’s contributions before and behind the camera in an era before mass corporatization and the sidelining of women in various roles across the film industry.

Patrick Friel, educator and programmer, is very interested in non-narrative and experimental film. Therefore, his five selections totally fit into those designations (well, with one semi-exception), but each of them offer totally different visual experiences and intentions.

Thomas Christensen is Curator at the Danish Film Institute, so it stands to reason that all of his selections hail from Denmark. All but one of them come in at “feature length” (and from the same director) as well, reflecting the country’s place in advancing film grammar, subjects, and character psychology at a crucial transitional time.

Eva Hielscher, head of film-related collections at Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, selects a wholly international survey of 1911 films, jumping from country to country and genre to genre. This heterogeneous view of the year ranges from French comedy and animation experiment shorts to an Italian epic and German feature…and a document of a historic expedition!

Casper Tybjerg, Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Copenhagen, selects five films that reflect the advancement of narrative cinematic drama. Whether they offer visual and emotional spectacle or crusading social messages, his picks demonstrate the international refinement of the cinematic medium.

The introduction to this 1911 season made a big point (or did it?) that the features have begun, and although the majority of the five most selected films from guests and listeners indeed operate in that mode, the vast majority of selections in general still conform to the time’s global film industry norm of one or two reelers. They reflect, or foreshadow, how quickly the cinematic form was evolving throughout the early and middle years of the 1910s decade.