S1 • E9 Apr 29, 2020 12m
6.4
Lois Weber (1879-1939), born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, began her career in entertainment touring the U.S. as a singer and concert pianist, after working with the Church Army, ministering to prostitutes and prisoners. In 1908, she was hired by American Gaumont, where she first acted in, and later directed, silent films at a studio in Flushing, New York. Weber wrote film scripts, designed sets and costumes, developed negatives, and edited films. In collaboration with her first husband, actor Phillips Smalley, Weber was one of the first film directors to experiment with sound, and was the first American woman to direct a full-length feature film, The Merchant of Venice, in 1913. In 1917, she became one of the first women to own her own film studio, and the first and only female member of the Motion Pictures Directors Association. Infused with the conviction that film could change culture, she directed over 135 films about controversial subject matters such as capital punishment, police violence, birth control, and poverty. Interviewees: biographer Shelley Stamp, Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California-Santa Cruz and author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood; and playwright and director Radha Blank, who won the 2020 Best Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
