We're bringing into focus a wide range of women amateur filmmakers whose creative work has been overlooked and unacknowledged in the archives.

Working closely with two partner archives, the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA) and the Irish Film Archive (IFA), we have conducted new research into existing collections of largely unknown women amateur filmmakers.

Our work

By identifying significant gaps in knowledge at the level of cataloguing, accession records, historical research, and metadata – and by adopting feminist methodologies that allow us to challenge existing practices – we have developed a toolkit that will allow any archive with a moving image collection to create more effective, useful and accessible records about women filmmakers.

Access the Toolkit

The Filmmakers

As part of this work, we have produced a set of biographies that highlight some of these amazing creative women. As a small step to making such women’s filmmaking more broadly available, below you will find small selection of women amateur filmmakers from across the UK and Ireland collections.

Agnes Heron

Agnes Heron (d.2002) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, living and working in Dublin, Ireland for much of her life. Heron was a chartered accountant, as well as a partner in an electrical contract...

Beres Laidlaw

Beres Laidlaw (1931-2018) was born Beres Murphy in April 1931 (IFA Laidlaw Collection Overview, 2013) and was a native of County Meath ( Irish Times , 1953: 5). She married Thomas K. Laidlaw in...

Dorothy Maud Maxey

Dorothy Maud Maxey (1919-2003) was a schoolteacher and keen amateur naturalist whose filmmaking combined aspects of her career in education with an extensive knowledge of the natural environment....

Joan Hammond

A prolific filmmaker active in and around Essex, Joan Hammond (1918-2016) was a founder member of the Clacton Cine Club in 1959, acting as club chairperson on three occasions between the 1960s and...

Joyce Allingham

Joyce Allingham’s (1913-2001) name is often overshadowed by that of her sister, the crime novelist Margery Allingham (who wrote, among others, the series of Campion detective stories). Joyce was a...

Laurie Day

Laura ‘Laurie’ Abbott Bruce Day (née Jones) (1897-1982) worked in partnership with her husband Stuart Day (1892–1973) as an impressive and prolific amateur filmmaking team who won numerous awards...

Letitia and Naomi Overend

The Overend sisters, Letitia (1880-1977) and Naomi (1900-1993), were famed in Dublin for many reasons beyond their filmmaking. Born into relative privilege, both women were deeply involved in...

Mabel Lilian Basham

Mabel Lilian Basham (1885-1966) resided in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and shot a series of 9.5mm films throughout the late-1920s and early-1930s, documenting daily life and key events in and around...

Margaret Currivan

The films of Margaret Currivan (1923-1985) are home movies at first glance - they capture personal memories and document family events and rituals of the Currivan family during the 1950s and...

Marjorie Martin

Unlike some filmmakers we have discovered, Marjorie Martin (1929-2016) was not a lone filmmaker or part of a wife-and-husband team: she was fully immersed in the world of the amateur cine club; in...

Philippa Ruth Miller

Philippa (Pippa) Miller (1905-2006) was a well-known Norfolk-based artist and schoolteacher whose love for the Broads, local flora and fauna, and village life, was captured in a series of 8mm...

Ruth Stuart Rodger

At the end of the 1930s Ruth Stuart (1904-1982) was an internationally renowned amateur filmmaker; winner of multiple awards across America, Britain and Europe; and hailed by Movie Maker as "the...

Sarah Daly

Sarah Daly grew up a film fan, enjoying watching old movies on television, and later developed an interest in photography, which then became her career aspiration. Not in possession of an Art...

Sister Maureen MacMahon

Sister Maureen MacMahon OP (b.1918), also known as Sr Maureen and Sr Grignon, is an artist, writer, educator, filmmaker and Dominican nun. She worked for many years in Art Education at both the...

Valrie Bristow Ellis

Valrie (Val) Bristow Ellis (1937-2018) was a Manchester-based schoolteacher and prolific amateur filmmaker whose work spanned a 50-year period from the mid-1960s onwards. Val was a member of...

Our partners

This work comes from a joint UK-Ireland collaboration between the University of East Anglia, Maynooth University, and the University of Sussex; funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Irish Research Council (IRC), as part of the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities scheme.

 

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