The Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible Project has been running for just over a year, this post is a chance to look back over our first steps and think about what we have learned so far
Pre-Project Planning
We began with a Pre Project Meeting in June 2024 at the University of Exeter to think about our first steps in our Project aims and workstrands
Getting started with women filmmakers’ archives – Autumn 2024
During autumn 2024 we spent some time scoping out our case study collections, the papers of filmmakers Tina Gharavi and of Gurinder Chadha in the Special Collections, at the British Film Institute National Archive, Berkhamsted
Public Engagement: Exe-X Alumna tour and talk – November 2024
In November 2024 we started a conversation about our project and its aims with wider audiences. The Exe-X Alumna Group, a University of Exeter alum group for women, visited the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum for a special tour and workshop under the theme of ‘Women’s Achievements in Film History’ with Dr Phil Wickham, Project Curatorial Advisor and Curator of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum and Professor Helen Hanson, Project Lead.
Woman With a Movie Camera Summit, BFI Southbank January 2025
In January 2025 members of the team delivered public engagement talks and a workshop at the Woman with a Movie Camera Summit, 2025
Wendy Russell, Project Co-Lead (BFI) and Helen Hanson collaborated with Professor Melanie Williams (University of East Anglia) on a panel of talks, on the theme of ‘The All-Seeing Eyes: Script Supervisors and their Archives’ at the BFI’s ‘Woman With a Movie Camera’ Summit. The panel aimed to spotlight the important work of script supervisors. Despite having the responsibility of overseeing ‘the story and context of all the other departments’ (Mary Cybulski), the role of the Script Supervisor in filmmaking ‘hinges on invisibility’, as Melanie Williams has noted in her resaerch on script supervisors. Our panel explored this highly gendered and essential filmmaking role from three perspectives: firstly Melanie Williams traced the role from early cinema to the present, secondly, Wendy showcased items from the BFI National Archive, to illustrate how archival work can make the labour of script supervisors more visible, thirdly, Helen Hanson discussed some pages from Penny Eyles’ continuity script from her work on Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2001), which is in her collection at the BFI Special Collections. Helen showed how Eyles’ continuity work, while essential in itself, gains importance for women’s film history by documenting the work of other women which might otherwise go unnoticed.
Wendy Russell, Eva Norton (BFI Archives Assistant), Lily Cheng (BFI Collections Audit Assistant) and Helen Hanson also collaborated in creating a workshop ‘Show and Tell: What Archives Teach Us about Continuity Work’. The workshop displayed original materials such as continuity scripts from the BFI’s Special Collections, such as Pat Rambaut’s continuity script for Michael Collins (Neil Jordan, 1996) which feature the annotations and documentation of the work of continuity supervisors. Eva wrote a post (with James Taylor) about the workshop for the BFI’s Inside the Archives Blog. We also thank BFI Conservator Tabitha Austin for supporting the workhshop by condition-checking materials and advising on handling and display.
Our Postdoctoral Researchers join the Team – welcoming Dr Jessica Boyall and Dr Katie Crosson
In April 2025 Jessica Boyall and Katie Crosson joined our project team.
Jessica completed her AHRC-funded PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2025, writing her thesis on the role and representation of women in the British Black Workshops. Before joining the University of Exeter, she was a Visiting Lecturer in the Media Arts Department at Royal Holloway, a Research Fellow at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin and a Research Assistant at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has also worked, in a curatorial capacity, at several community-focused organisations including, most recently, Ormside Projects in London.
Jessica will be working on the archival workstrand of the project, she will be primarily based at the BFI National Archive. Since starting she has been working with the Gurinder Chadha collection, and is developing feminist methodologies for cataloguing the archives of leading women filmmakers.
Katie Crosson gained her AHRC-funded PhD from Royal Holloway and the British Film Institute in 2024 with a thesis titled ‘Replay for Today: Re-Visiting Play for Today (1970-1984) at Fifty’. Her research explores critical approaches to curation, including practices of de-canonisation; feminist screen theory; realism(s) and emotion; film and television histories, especially in relation to marginalisation; representations of violence against women on-screen; and the relationship between aesthetics and ideology.
Katie will be working on the curatorial workstrand of the project, she will be primarily based at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. Since starting she has been working with the collection of the museum, with a focus on recovering women’s script writing work in a large donation of scripts from Pinewood studios. Katie has also been devising and delivering public engagement activities with Helen Hanson.
Into the Archives Research Seminar: Discussion between Archive Professionals and Archival Researchers – June 2025
In June 2025 the Department of Communications, Drama and Film at Exeter hosted the ‘Into the Archives’ Research Seminar co-organised by Professor Jerri Daboo (Drama) and Professor Helen Hanson (Film). The event brought together professional archivists and curators from archives of creative figures in theatre and film, with academic researchers in Drama and Film to share perspectives on archival practice and archival research.
Erin Lee (Head of Archive at the National Theatre) and Wendy Russell (British Film Institute) set the agenda for discussion by outlining what they see as opportunities and challenges in the sector of creative archives. The participating audience joined a wide ranging conversation with contributions to the discussion from two of our international project partner archives: Professor Eric Hoyt and Kallan Benjamin (University of Wisconsin, Madison and Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research) and Megan Doherty (Senior Manager, Graphic Arts, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles).
Conference Presentations at ‘Doing Women’s Film and Television History 7’ Lincoln, June 2025
Members of the project team attended the ‘Doing Women’s Film and Television History Conference 7′ in Lincoln, the biennial conference of the Women’s Film and Television History Network UK and Ireland. As a team we presented our work in progress from our different project workstrands.
Putting women into film history at the Futures Festival, Exeter October 2025
Katie Crosson and Helen Hanson designed a ‘Pop Up Curiosity Shop’, in the form of a stall for the Futures Festival, at the Exeter Phoenix Arts and Media Centre. The festival was open to all, and our aim was to engage visitors with a history of women’s creative screen work. This included some of our early discoveries of women’s script writing from a donation of scripts from Pinewood donation now located at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, including scripts by Janet Green, Hazel Adair, Diana Morgan and others.
On the wall behind our stall we designed a visual timeline of women’s achievements in film history, primarily in the British and US contexts, featuring figures such as Lois Weber, Edith Head, Anne V. Coates, Kathryn Bigelow, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Amma Asante and Charlotte Wells. Visitors to our stall were invited to open an archive box and discover more about some of the women screen workers we are researching in our project. We featured figures such as Betty Box, Muriel Box, Janet Green, Hazel Adair, Joan Henry, Lesley Storm, Gurinder Chadha, Tina Gharavi, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Meera Syal, Pat Rambaut, Nina Kellgren, and others. Our visitors added the woman to the timeline, and put the woman into film history!