Curated by Maggie Hennefeld (UMN, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature)

Hands give us metaphors for the urgency of collective labor, but they also appeared as surreal and uncanny images across the silent film archive. In this playful program, laboring limbs fall in love, catch fire, metamorphose into toy animals, chop wood, cut films, smoke pipes (while pregnant!), hypnotize circus dancers, and build zoomorphic shelters from the storm—all accompanied by Dreamland Faces’ live original score that includes Northrop’s historic pipe organ.

The seven films in this program include Stella Simon's rhythmic choreography of disembodied hands, Zora Neale Hurston's fieldwork footage shot in the 1920s, Alice Guy-Blaché's voracious comedy of maternity cravings, Ladislaw Starewicz's stop-motion fable starring dead bugs, Segundo de Chomón's phantasmagoric animation, a grotesque German puppet film, and a social satire about gendered labor and the disastrous results of editing film newsreels on a too-tight deadline! 

Gallery

Know Before You Go

Event Information

  • In-person Seating: General Admission
  • Performance Begins: Tue, Nov 14, 7:00 pm CT; On-demand through Nov 26
  • Accessibility: This event will be captioned, with other accessibility services available upon request.
  • Detailed Event Information and Streaming Access: Find Your Event Info link on your order confirmation or check your email within 48 hours for detailed information.

If you need assistance with your tickets, please call 612-624-2345, email umntix@umn.edu.

Learn More - Explore These Themes

The content below derives from the Northrop Across Campus Program that supports Northrop's mission towards intersections between performing arts and education for the benefit of all participants now and for generations to come.

Find ways to make thematic connections to these suggested topics:

  • African American & African Studies 
  • American Studies
  • Art: Film, Video
  • Comparative Literature & Cultural Studies
  • Theatre Arts
  • Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies
  • History
  • Moving Image Studies
  • Music

Start a conversation about the performance, or encourage reflection, using these questions as inspiration.

In her interview with the How do you like it so far? podcast, University of Minnesota professor and silent film curator Maggie Hennefeld references the “historical amnesia” that excludes women from our collective memory of silent cinema. She says modern audiences are often surprised to find out how many women were involved in film, and how radically they behave on-screen. 

  • How can preserving and screening little known films change the way we understand history? 
  • Why do you think women were so eager to embrace silent film as a medium? 
  • How might creating silent films have allowed them to subvert gender expectations?

One film in this collection, The Dragonfly and the Ant, is considered a pioneer of stop motion animation. According to Vox, the filmmaker, Vladislaw Starewicz’s animation of real bugs was a “combination of wild invention and obsessive detail (that) created a new art form.”

  • Why might a filmmaker decide to create a stop motion animation film?
  • How have stop motion animation and other special effects changed over time?
  • How do you think it felt to watch these films when they were first released?

Dreamland Faces, who will be providing music for this event, have a history of composing live accompaniment for silent cinema. In a list the duo created of reasons modern composers should consider scoring silent films, they note, “like a poem, silent films don’t typically have ‘official’ scores and can be re-scored over and over.” 

  • How do you think a different score could impact the viewing experience? 
  • How might music change the tone/message of a film?
  • How do you think the relationship between music and film has changed over the years? Do you have favorite movie soundtracks?

Acknowledgments

Minnesota State Arts Board - logos

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.