Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers — Dr. Shelley Stamp Interview

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Shelley Stamp has made musing on the role of gender in film her life’s work. From her fascination with 70s horror films, to the work of pioneering filmmaker Lois Weber, a long-forgotten director working at the same time as D.W. Griffith, and just as popular. And just as dynamically creative in telling stories cinematically.

We spoke at the Roxie Theater in conjunction with the release of Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers. Kino Lorber’s a six-disc (DVD or Blu-Ray) set curated by Dr. Stamp, and featuring not only Weber and Alice Guy Blaché, but films by women who have not been heard of outside of scholarly circles, if there, in almost a century.  The Roxie was hosting the first of three programs from the set, and we settled in at the Little Roxie for a conversation about gender, film, and the less obvious reason that horror is so subversive.

For more information about Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, visit Kino Lorber.

Stamp’s work includes contributions to scholarly film journals, as well as two books on the early years of film, Lois Weber in Early Hollywood and Movie-Struck Girls. She is a professor of Film + Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz