Off to the Pictures

'Off to the Pictures presents an alternative way of examining the gendered uses of film and its part in determining the complex and changing roles and identities of women after the First World War. Looking at a range of women’s writings on or for the movies, Stead interrogates written representations of the figure of the female cinema-goer as original or artistic reflections of women who were themselves involved in processes of shaping their identity as cinema-goers and as women working in cinema, journalism or literature. A unique feature of this book is that it considers women both as consumers and producers of film and film culture.' -- Leen Engelen, LUCA School of Arts & KU Leuven * Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television *
'Off to the Pictures presents an alternative way of examining the gendered uses of film and its part in determining the complex and changing roles and identities of women after the First World War. Looking at a range of women’s writings on or for the movies, Stead interrogates written representations of the figure of the female cinema-goer as original or artistic reflections of women who were themselves involved in processes of shaping their identity as cinema-goers and as women working in cinema, journalism or literature. A unique feature of this book is that it considers women both as consumers and producers of film and film culture.' -- Leen Engelen, LUCA School of Arts & KU Leuven * Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television *
In bringing together “cinema-going characters” with “creators of film fictions” across an array of genres and media, Stead’s project not only demonstrates how gender was navigated through cinema in this transformative period in the United Kingdom but also offers innovative means of interconnecting authorial and fictional identities, lived and imagined experiences, across media without collapsing them. -- Laurel Harris, Rider University * Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature *
In bringing together “cinema-going characters” with “creators of film fictions” across an array of genres and media, Stead’s project not only demonstrates how gender was navigated through cinema in this transformative period in the United Kingdom but also offers innovative means of interconnecting authorial and fictional identities, lived and imagined experiences, across media without collapsing them. -- Laurel Harris, Rider University * Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature *
Lisa Stead's methodologically sophisticated and impeccably researched study of women and cinema culture between the wars brings under the spotlight a transformative moment when popular media, modernity, modernism and femininity came together in shaping unprecedented new ways of being a woman.' -- Professor Annette Kuhn, Queen Mary University of London