Hiding in Plain Sight: Reviving the Work of Women Film Auteurs in the Digital Age
USC's Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity documents the under-representation of women directors in the Hollywood film industry, yet they are a strong presence among American independent filmmakers. Women film auteurs have been "hiding in plain sight" since the dawn of cinema, but scholarship & access lag behind, hindered by insufficient funds for collection, preservation & documentation. When Laboratory for Icon & Idiom, Inc. (LII)/IndieCollect took custody of 4000+ motion pictures at the DuArt laboratory, it discovered numerous films by women, identified with help from the Women's Film Preservation Fund, Women Make Movies, and Film-Makers' Cooperative. Under its digitization & access initiative, LII will create high-resolution scans of 147 films by women directors, including 70 from Film-Makers' Cooperative. After scanning, LII will return the Film-Makers' Coop titles to its vault, deposit the others at collaborating archives, and produce excellent records and information about the newly-accessible digital versions of these historic films.