Introduction Women’s Work in Film Production

Abstract

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the work done by women in film production in the twentieth century. One of the common misunderstandings of women in film production is that after the pioneering days of early cinema — when women directed and headed up their own production companies — they contributed little of substance to film production until the feminist developments of the 1970s. This book challenges that view as too limiting and instead offers a fresh assessment of women and their work in the British film industry in the decades following the introduction of sound. It focuses on the six decades between 1930 and 1989, when employment in the film industry was tightly regulated by the Association of Cine-Technicians (ACT), the country's leading film union. Mapping women's work by decade, and in fiction and nonfiction filmmaking, the book examines women's economic and creative contribution to film production in the many “below-the-line” roles in which they were typically employed. It also highlights new lines of inquiry in the relationship between women and cultural production, reflects on issues of gender and creativity, and opens up fundamental questions about how we write film history.