Kate Saccone has served as a project manager for the Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP) since 2013. In her interview, she talks about the origins, community, and editorial practices of the WFPP and addresses the platform's role as a social networking space for feminist film historians. She also outlines the WFPP's strategies for long-term preservation and accessibility.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17234442
#FeministFilmHistory #WFPP #DigitalScholarlyPublishing #Metadata #EarlyCinema #DH #DataPractices
In this interview, Kate Saccone, project manager of the Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP) since 2013, reflects on the origins, the community, and the database of the WFPP. She highlights the role of the WFPP as a digital platform for research and publication. The interview discusses the handling of gaps, ambiguities, and absences in the data, accessibility, licensing, and long-term preservation of digital content, particularly with regard to Creative Commons licenses and technical infrastructure. Saccone addresses the WFPP as a social networking space for feminist film historians and outlines future developments for the project. The interview is part of an interview series on data practices, provenance, and categorizations in film history initiated by the research group „Aesthetics of Access. Visualizing Research Data on Women in Film History“ (DAVIF) (2021–2025), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR). The goal of the research group is to explore data visualizations in order to tell different stories differently. The WFPP is one of the film historiographical project partners, in addition to the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF), both of whom have provided their research data for data visualizations. The interview series: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17233942 The project website: https://uni-marburg.de/Q85oo
In the early 1990s, renowned film scholar Jane Gaines founded the Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP), a digital scholarly resource dedicated to women’s involvement in film production during the silent film era. In this interview, she reflects on the impact of the WFPP on her own research at the intersection of empirical approaches and speculative historiography.
The interview: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17234308
The WFPP: https://wfpp.columbia.edu/
In this interview, Jane Gaines, professor of film studies and co-founder of the Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP), revisits the development of the WFPP in the early 1990s. Drawing on the term “unhistoricized women film pioneers”, she dives into the invisible aspects of film historiography and how the WFPP addresses these gaps by drawing attention to the diverse careers of women in early cinema. She outlines the organizational structure of the WFPP, including the importance of technical support from Columbia University and the international collaborations with students and scholars. Gaines reflects on the impact of the WFPP onher own research at the intersection of empirical approaches and speculative historiography. Furthermore, she emphasizes the WFPP’s role in shaping feminist film historiographyby focusing on outreach and recognition of marginalized filmmakers. The interview is part of an interview series on data practices, provenance, and categorizations in film history initiated by the research group „Aesthetics of Access. Visualizing Research Data on Women in Film History“ (DAVIF) (2021–2025), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR). The goal of the research group is to explore data visualizations in order to tell different stories differently. The WFPP is one of the film historiographical project partners, in addition to the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF), both of whom have provided their research data for data visualizations. The interview series: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17233942 The project website: https://uni-marburg.de/Q85oo
Inwiefern können #Datenvisualisierungen zur Repräsentation und Sichtbarmachung von Karrieren früher Filmemacherinnen beitragen?
Mit dieser Frage setzt sich @marleneleonie in ihrem #DAVIF Teilprojekt auseinander. Die Datengrundlage für ihre Untersuchungen stellen die "unhistorisierten Filmpionierinnen" des Women Film Pioneers Project #WFPP und Daten des Deutschen Filminstitut & Filmmuseum – DFF dar.
#feministischeFilmgeschichtsschreibung #FrauenundFilm #Filmwissenschaft
DAVIF