21 Aug

16:30

Eye Filmmuseum

IJpromenade 1, Amsterdam

'Silent Queer Shorts' guides us through short films and clips from the Eye Filmmuseum collection, covering a range of genres from the early days of film history, with an introduction by a curator.

Silent Queer Shorts

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There has been censorship as long as there have been stories. Each new attempt at censorship challenges people to work around it. One common way of doing so is through coding, subtext, irony, and fairytales. As long as stories about members of the LGBTIQ+ community were – and in some places still are – repressed, coding will flourish, as it did in the early days of cinema.

'Silent Queer Shorts' guides us through beautiful short films and fragments from the collection, covering a range of genres, from comedy and adventure to dance performances and slapstick, from the first decades of film history.

Freedom

Drag queens, tomboys, those special ‘best girlfriends’, cross-dressers – all enjoy blurring pre-defined categories until we get dizzy and just accept what we can't figure out. And why would we need to, anyway?

Instead, marvel at the freedom of women emerging from the closet and the corset, and so many other constraints besides. Admire the lightness of men who enjoy jewellery and fashion.

Bullying, ‘re-education’ and isolation are all too often unavoidable parts of a queer person’s life. But they’re just as big a part of the programme as they are of life itself, and the joys clearly outweigh the hardships the queer community has – for too long, alas – had to endure.

Introduced by Lou Burkart, curator of Eye’s film collection, who will provide insights into the curatorial choices made, the backgrounds of the actors in the films and the use of queer coding.

The films are accompanied live on the grand piano by pianist Nora Mulder.

Programme

Dans l’hellade (Charles Decroix, FR 1909)
Short film of two women dancing in a garden.
Eugénie, redresse-toi (Jean Durand, FR 1911)
Short comedy in which a tall young woman (the actor is a man) is told to sit up straight. But when she does so, this unleashes all kinds of havoc.
When Mary Grew Up (James Young, US 1912)
Silent romantic comedy about a young, recalcitrant woman who finds peace in the arms of her loving neighbour.
Tilly in a Boarding House (Hay Plumb, GB 1912)
Tilly and Dolly are on holiday. They disguise themselves as boys and cause mayhem in their boarding house.
L'orgie romaine (Louis Feuillade, FR 1911)
Short costume drama about decadence at the court of the debauched emperor Heliogabalus, 218 AD. This tyrant surrounds himself with women, and punishes them by throwing them to the lions. Ultimately, the emperor is beheaded by his bodyguards.
Toffe jongens onder de mobilisatie (Jan van Dommelen, NL 1914)
A group of boarding-school girls goes to the beach at Zandvoort. After swimming, Adèle and one of her friends switch clothes with two soldiers, leading to comical complications.
Lessons in Courtship (Onbekend, US 1912)
Farce in which Dick seeks to enter into a courtship with a girl, and is instructed in this by the brother of the object of his affections.