Cinema’s First Nasty Women

Women rebel, subvert gender roles, and engage in riotous slapstick in films from a collection spotlighting the obscure and the unknown. Naming them “Nasty Women” plays into the recent revival of feminist politics and the embrace of the women disobedient to rising authoritarianism.

You will see Florence Turner, “The Vitagraph Girl” star and direct herself as a woman entering a face-making contest; Black comedienne Bertha Regustus making everybody laugh when she’s dosed with nitrous oxide; Sarah Duhamel spreading delight with her phonograph; Fay Tincher as a cowgirl resistant to being civilized; Alice Ardell pledging a flapper sorority that involves cross dressing as a prince, and in “What’s the World Coming To” 100 years in the future (2026) where men’s and women’s roles have slipped and overlapped.

Step back into an alternate past where filmmaking women were in control.