Cancelled: Letters, lives and archives: an epistolary approach to women’s film history

Please note that the BAFTSS 2020 Conference is now cancelled

Panel: Letters, lives and archives: an epistolary approach to women’s film history 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 sidelined or marginalised in traditional historiography. Showcasing new work on three such individuals – Jill Craigie, Lotte Eisner, Lotte Reiniger – this panel will explore the opportunities and challenges of an epistolary methodology. How can we re-construct a life from women’s written communications and other print-based materials in the archive? How can this approach help us to move beyond ‘surface’ level understanding in order to re-think women’s contributions to cinema and film history? The panel speakers are Julia Eisner, Tashi Petter and Lizzie Thynne. This panel came out of a collaborative workshop delivered by Julia Eisner and Tashi Petter, as part of the DAAD-funded project ‘Circulating Cinema: the moving image archive as Anglo-German contact zone (CIRCE)’. To join the BAFTSS 2020 Conference, please register here.