JILL CRAIGIE: FILM PIONEER 

Our research from the AHRC funded project, Jill Craigie: Film Pioneer, (PI: Lizzie Thynne; PDRA: Hollie Price) has enhanced awareness of women’s contribution to cultural production, equality issues in film and television and understanding of documentary forms and heritage. The project explored the career and life of one of the first women to direct documentaries in the UK.

Our engagement with non-academic audiences began during our primary research period in 2019 – 2020 when we followed the trajectory of Craigie’s own films by filming in places where she shot her films, in particular South Wales, the location for Blue Scar (1949) (on the nationalization of the mines) and Plymouth for The Way We Live (1947) (on the plan to rebuild the blitzed city). We screened our project film, Independent Miss Craigie (2021), in these locations with the support of Gywnfi Heritage and The Arts Cinema Plymouth respectively as a work in progress and as a finished film. Audiences valued the insights our research provided into the histories and audio-visual heritage of their home towns. In 2020 – 2021, other public screenings and presentations for diverse public and women’s groups included Hypatia Trust, Cornwall, Family Ties Network (an artists’ group), and Four Corners, London and The Stanley Spencer Gallery (Cookham).

We reached further live public audiences through a collaboration with the Independent Cinema Office which led to a tour of selected regional cinemas in winter 2021-22 which reached an over 700 viewers (including Tyneside, Chapter, Phoenix, Watershed, Dalston Rio, Watershed, Hampstead Everyman). Programmers in these cinemas took film as it enhanced their offering of independent and feminist film to their audiences.

Accompanying q and as sparked debate on women’s roles in the film industry today, the representation of sexual violence and how the film’s presentation of its subject through its first person narration and curation of multiple archival sources enriches documentary practice. Viewers reported increased awareness of Craigie as a significant figure in documentary history, her feminist perspective, and the importance of her life history in understanding how women’s creativity is impacted by social expectations.

Our research enhanced our partner, the BFI’s, initiatives to foreground the work of early women documentarists and curate a programme and two-disc dvd selection of their work, ‘The Camera is Ours; Britain’s Women Documentary Makers’ (2022). ‘Independent Miss Craigie’ provided understanding of the industrial and social context in which these directors worked in the 1940s and 50s through its inclusion as a feature on the dvd  (reviewed in The Guardian, The Times, The Financial Times, CineOutsider and London Grip) and our participation in screenings and a study day at BFI Southbank (March 2022). Thynne’s film was acclaimed for highlighting challenges for women in the film industry and thus appreciating their achievements, especially in the genres they were employed in at mid century  – ‘once you learn about the obstacles put in the way of talented directors like [Craigie], it makes you want to pay homage to the others – even if it means watching public information films’ (Sarah Kent, Arts Desk).

In December 2021, Thynne was invited by the BFI to curate an exhibition there (‘Jill Craigie: Film Pioneer’, February – September 2022, Mezzanine Gallery). This show contextualized 'The Camera is Ours' programme and increased audience engagement. It juxtaposed Craigie’s star-like specularization in press and publicity in the 1940s with her own use of participants from regional communities in her own films. The film’s contribution to the creative quality of British film has now also been recognized through its acquisition by BFI player (from 6 March 2023) where it is accessible to a national public audience. To date the film has been shown to international audiences via curated screenings on the ICO platform, at selected film festivals and conferences, including the Female Eye Festival, Toronto where it won the Best Foreign Documentary award. The film was also awarded Creative Reuse of Archive Award, Learning on Screen, UK, 2023.

Given the challenges of live interaction with the education sector during the pandemic we produced a teaching resource pack on women documentary makers (Price, 2021) tailored to Eduqas A-Level Film Studies specifically and their feedback suggested it enhanced their teaching in the area as it made links between women documentary directors of different periods, the challenges they faced and placed texts in context.

In Autumn 2022 the pack and masterclasses were offered to further teachers in the SE region. Students comments on a masterclass include; ‘as a person wanting to become a female film creator this was very empowering’ ‘I realized how few female directors I know’ ‘it was shown women’s impact into documentary films’ they reported learning about ‘how differently women filmmakers were see compared to men’ ‘a better understanding of women directing as it’s not always talked about’ ‘appreciation of how much harder women had to work to have a chance’ (Worthing College, 21/1/23). We are seeking further avenues to present this resource to users.

We created opportunities for dialogue with contemporary women film-makers outside of London. The 'Making the Grade' weekender at the Arts Institute Plymouth- a series of three events over two days (November 2021) – and Craigie's filmmaking career as a springboard to explore the opportunities for women documentary filmmakers past and present.  

In 2024 – 25, supported by the AHRC-IAA fund, Thynne collaborated with two Plymouth-based groups: a film collective, Imperfect Cinema and Red Velvet, a senior citizens’ cinema club, to run workshops using Craigie’s placed based films, The Way We Live and Blue Scar respectively, as a starting point for participants to explore aspects of their present day and past lives in their home towns through writing, video and audio. The workshops have to date resulted in two short films Can I be Me? (made with Plymouth school students) and There We Are (made with residents of Blaengywnfi, in the Neath Port Talbot area) which will be shared in 2025.