11.02.25, 20:30, Lois Weber double-bill

From Lois with love! At the start of this new Film-Plateau spring, we turn the spotlight on a female film pioneer from silent film history: the influential Lois Weber. A woman of many talents, she began her career in music and theatre where she met her husband Phillips Smalley. They later became better known as ‘The Smalleys’ in their first film productions. In Suspense, a 1913 one-reel thriller, we catch our first glimpse of the ravishing Lois in the role of a beleaguered woman with child. Partly the revolutionary use of the first split screen, to emphasise tension, makes this short film iconic.

The melodrama Shoes follows a shop girl who is so poor that she cannot buy her own shoes, and so is tempted to prostitute herself. She eventually succumbs to an offer from a man in the cabaret ‘The Blue Goose’. Lois Weber was the first woman to be able to film feature films and build a rich film oeuvre. In 1917, she founded her own film studio, Lois Weber Productions, in Hollywood.

With live accompaniment by Lou Wery on piano and effects.
This film will be introduced by Film-Plateau coordinator Julie Daems.