Timely, topical, and provocative:
Making Noise About Silent Film: Conversations About Cinema, Culture, and Social Change
The latest program series hosted by the Finger Lakes Film Trail, explores the impact of silent cinema on society and culture in the early twentieth century.
Through four key presentations, the series examines the power of cinema in defining mass culture, the impact of its emerging technologies in American industry and life, and its interrogation of social roles through depictions of the “New Woman” and the expanding opportunities in post-World War One society. Making Noise About Silent Film will entertain as well as educate. Moreover, by encouraging viewers to ponder their own values, it will promote an understanding of the ways that media have shaped and influenced Americans’ personal, political, and social attitudes. The ideas that the series generates will initiate further valuable discussion and stimulate “community conversations” about the significance of cinema as an agent of social and cultural change.
This four-part lecture series launched February 2022.
ATTEND A LECTURE
VIEW FILMS THAT DEFINED THE ERA OF EARLY CINEMA
DIVE INTO RELATED READINGS
Launch your own conversations about the sweeping social and culture changes of the early 20th century as we
Make Noise About Silent Film.
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The Representation of African Americans in Silent Film: D.W. Griffith and the Birth of Defamation
Presented Wednesday, February 23, 2022, 4:30 pm
Via Zoom Hosted by The Rossell Hope Robbins Library at the University of Rochester
An examination of racial and racist stereotyping in mainstream silent films and the anti-typing of African-Americans in “race” films, primarily by race filmmakers (such as Oscar Micheaux, George and Noble Johnson, and Richard E. Norman), who strove to reverse those unfortunate stereotypes.
Presenter: Barbara Tepa Lupack, film historian and former Academic Dean, SUNY
Read Lupack’s “Representation of African Americans in Silent Film” Essay
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From Silents to Talking Pictures: The Competition to Bring Sound to Movies
Presented Wednesday, April 27, 2022, 7:00 pm
In person at The Carriage House Theater, Case Research Lab and Cayuga Museum, 203 Genesee Street (behind the Cayuga Museum), Auburn, NY 13021
Although music was a natural accompaniment to silent films, few early movie studios thought talking pictures had a chance. Discover how two rags-to-riches moguls—William Fox of Fox Film Corporation working with Auburn physicist Ted Case, and Sam Warner of Warner Brothers Studio collaborating with Western Electric—brought the world a new way to experience motion pictures, one that profoundly transformed popular culture.
Presenter: Jim Loperfido, film historian who has worked in the industry for over forty years.
This event is co-sponsored by the Case Research Laboratory and the Cayuga Museum of History and Art.
Watch Loperfido’s “From Silents to Talking Pictures” Presentation
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Fearless, Peerless Fashions in Silent Serials
Presented Wednesday, May 4, 2022, 7:00 pm
In person at Tompkins Center for History and Culture, CAP Gallery, 110 N. Tioga Street, Ithaca, NY 14850
A look at the way the "New Woman" in silent serial films used fashion to redefine her identity and transform the status of women in domestic, work, and social spaces.
Presenter: Dr. Denise N. Green, Associate Professor and Director, Cornell Fashion and Textile Collection, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
This event is co-sponsored by the Wharton Studio Museum.
Read Green’s “Fearless & Peerless: Fashions in Serial Queen Melodramas”
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From Nickelodeon to Movie Palace: The Phenomenon of Early Cinema as Mass Entertainment
Presented Saturday, May 21, 2022, 1:00 pm
In person at the Dryden Theater, George Eastman Museum, 900 East Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607
A look at the evolution of cinema from the crude nickelodeon to the movie “palaces” and the ways that the cinema boom changed the stratification of American society. As movies became the first mass market entertainment for Americans, they not only embraced lower and immigrant-class audiences but also courted women viewers, a development that helped to change perceptions of women and reshape their participation in family, business, and political life.
Presenter: Ken Fox, Head of Library and Archives, George Eastman Museum
This event is co-sponsored by the George Eastman Museum.
Read Fox’s “From the Nickelodeon to the Movie Palace: The Phenomenon of Early Movie Exhibition.”
The Lecturers
Dr. Barbara Tepa Lupack is former professor of English at St. John’s University and Wayne State College, academic dean at SUNY, and Fulbright Professor of American Literature in Poland and in France. Recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the Helm Fellowship at Indiana University and the Senior Scholar Fellowship at the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, she is author or editor of more than twenty-five books, including Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking (Indiana University Press, 2013) and Silent Serial Sensations: The Wharton Brothers and the Magic of Early Cinema (Cornell University Press, 2020).
A business consultant and film historian, Jim Loperfido is the past Board Chair and CEO of the Syracuse International Film Festival. Loperfido has overseen a number of independent film and video production entities and lobbied on behalf of the entertainment industry in Washington, D.C. He has also written on a number of film topics, including the Wharton Brothers in Ithaca, Carlyle Blackwell, and a compendium of Central New York films.
Making Noise About Silent Film Lecture Series Lecture #2: “From Silents to Talking Pictures”
Dr. Denise N. Green is Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design at Cornell University and Director of the Cornell Fashion and Textile Collection. Recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Cornell Council for the Arts, she has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters; and she is co-author of Fashion and Cultural Studies. As a designer and fashion anthropologist, she uses creative and traditional qualitative research methods to study social, cultural, historical, and aesthetic aspects of fashion. Her work has received media attention in major publications, including CNN, Fox News, The Washington Times, and Newsday.
Ken Fox is the Head of Library and Archives at the Richard and Ronay Menschel Library at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. Formerly the associate editor of The Motion Picture Guide and a film reviewer for TV Guide, he is a graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and holds a master's degree in Information Science from the State University of New York at Albany.
Our Team
Barbara Tepa Lupack is the grant coordinator for the program series, Making Noise About Silent Film: Conversations About Cinema, Culture, & Social Change and Race Films/Race Matters: Starting Conversations About Race in America, both sponsored in part by Humanities New York. Making Noise About Silent Film is the fourth HNY grant she has coordinated for the Finger Lakes Film Trail, beginning with a Vision Grant in 2018 to launch the FLFT and an Action Grant in 2019 to assist in the implementation of the first full year of program events. From 2015 to 2018, she served as New York State Public Scholar through HNY, in which capacity she lectured on race films, on racial stereotypes, and on race filmmakers Richard E. Norman and Oscar Micheaux. She has also held a number of individual grants and awards, including a travel and research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Diana Riesman, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Wharton Studio Museum and creator of the Finger Lakes Film Trail, is closely and directly involved in all aspects of the Humanities New York grant planning and program implementation. She has led WSM’s partnership in the Tompkins Center for History and Culture, which includes the installation of a permanent exhibit on Ithaca’s role in early film history, and is spearheading efforts to develop the historic Wharton Studio building in partnership with the City of Ithaca and Friends of Stewart Park. She is a founding member and currently serves as Chair of the Board of Friends of Stewart Park, a nonprofit committed to the revitalization of Stewart Park, Ithaca’s main waterfront park, where the Wharton Studio building is located.
Patricia Longoria, Making Noise About Silent Film website manager, researches and writes about the social history of Central New York, with a focus on the built environment. As Deputy Historian of the Village of Cayuga Heights, she researched house histories and traced the transition of the village from agricultural land to suburban development as a part of the American Association for State and Local History-award winning Cayuga Heights History Project. Patricia spread awareness of local historic preservation issues through her role as Events and Community Engagement Coordinator at Historic Ithaca. As a past Board member of the Wharton Studio Museum, she supported efforts to preserve Ithaca’s role in early film history and most recently contributed to “Black History & Culture Destinations in the Finger Lakes: Ithaca Sites” for the Finger Lakes Film Trail and the “Biggest Little Movie City” exhibit at the Tompkins Center for History and Culture.
Thank you.
The Finger Lakes Film Trail is grateful to all the contributors to and supporters of the Making Noise About Silent Film lecture series. In particular, the FLFT acknowledges the following individuals:
Humanities New York: Sara Ogger, Michael Washburn, Scarlett Rebman, and Joe Murphy, for support of the Finger Lakes Film Trail and encouragement of its programs, going back to the inception of the FLFT in 2018.
As with its 2021 digital film series Race Films/Race Matters, FLFT's new lecture series Making Noise About Silent Film: Conversations About Culture, Cinema, and Social Change will feature supplemental information related to each lecture, including an essay by each presenter, related images, links to films, and suggestions for future reading and watching.
The Finger Lakes Film Trail program series Making Noise About Silent Film: Conversations About Cinema, Culture, and Social Change is made possible by an Action Grant from Humanities New York, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Humanities New York has been a valued financial supporter of the Finger Lakes Film Trail since its inception in 2018.