Gender Rebels (double bill)

Hippodrome

Nasty Women Programme

Ever since Donald Trump interrupted Hilary Clinton during a 2016 Presidential Debate, #NastyWomen has become a global feminist rallying cry. Yet, there is a long and robust history of women celebrating their own nastiness to speak truth to patriarchal power. Meet HippFest's very own Nasty Women in this new programme, co-curated by Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak.

For this fun-filled double-bill, our guest curators showcase two favourites about gender hijinks in the Wild West! Women wearing the trousers... and the cowboy boots to match! Our first Nasty Woman is Actor-Producer Texas Guinan - a successful Broadway star, who played heroic cowgirls in films throughout the 1910s, and here plays a self-sufficient ranch owner who reluctantly decides to enlist the help of a husband.

Next meet hugely popular comedy actress Fay Tincher as cowgirl Ann. 'Rowdy' by name and 'rowdy' by nature. Tincher worked continuously from 1912 to 1928, appearing in more than 160 films, also running a production company of her own.

The Night Rider: Dir. Jay Hunt | USA | 1920 | N/C U | English intertitles | 25m
With: Texas Guinan, Pat Hartigan

Rowdy Ann: Dir. Al Christie | USA | 1919 | N/C U | English intertitles | 24m
With: Fay Tincher, Eddie Barry and Katherine Lewis

Performing live: Meg Morley (piano)

Screening material courtesy of Kino Lorber

Co-curated by Laura Horak (Director of the Transgender Media Lab, Associate Professor of Film Studies, Carleton University; author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema) and Maggie Hennefeld (Associate Professor, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota; author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes).

With an introduction by Pamela Hutchinson - a freelance writer, critic and historian, specialising in silent and classic cinema. Pamela is the founder of silentlondon.co.uk and the author of the BFI Classic: Pandora's Box.