Introduced by Maggie Hennefeld (pre-recorded) Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin (piano) and Joanna Seaton (voice)
Cinema’s First Nasty Women is a project that celebrates feminist comedy, unruly activism, and queer gender play in cinema from the early twentieth century. In this extravaganza of Contagious Revenge, French nursemaids go on strike, a teenage tomboy electrocutes the police, domestic workers break all the dishes, and a feminist cattle wrangler holds her bridegroom at gunpoint in a rare Western comedy starring the legendary speakeasy owner Texas Guinan. Issues of social justice, gender equity, workplace rights, dangerous new technologies, and physical contagion abound across this irreverent screening of ten slapstick comedies.
