Twenty-First Century Silent Film Culture

Maggie Hennefeld, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, received the Mid-Career Faculty Research Award for 2023–25. Hennefeld plans to use this award to research silent films, which have surged in popularity as important cultural artifacts.

What is your project and how does it connect to your broader research interests?

Twenty-First Century Silent Film Culture tracks the global resurgence and energetic proliferation of silent film community and spectatorship amid the renaissance of archival rediscoveries, digitization of inaccessible celluloid prints, and rapidly transforming audience demographics. I have been researching and writing about silent cinema since I was a graduate student. My two books focus on feminist slapstick comedy and women's laughter during the silent film era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Although over 80 percent of all silent films ever made are now lost, the ones that survive have been enthusiastically received by twenty-first-century film audiences, who vastly prefer attending a public event to see a newly restored celluloid print with live music over streaming repetitive platform content at home in self-isolation. I have participated in spreading the gospel of silent film culture through my work as a curator of local screenings in the Twin Cities, repertory programs at archival festivals, and a 4-disc DVD/Blu-ray set, "Cinema's First Nasty Women," which includes 99 feminist silent film with new, original music and a variety of educational special features.
 

What's exciting about your project? What has this award allowed you to do?

Why silent cinema in the twenty-first century? The past several decades have witnessed a global revival of silent film culture. Viewers today are astonished to discover how visually innovative and socially daring cinema already was a hundred years ago. In films from the early 1900s, kitchen maids lead general strikes, lesbian air pirates descend from stencil-colored steampunk dirigibles, pregnant women give birth in public parks, and Model-T automobiles metamorphose into hummingbirds.

This award has allowed me to travel to festivals such as Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, and MoMA's Silent Film Week in New York City where I've spoken with the archivists, curators, musicians, and audiences leading the charge of the global revival of silent film culture. Reciprocally, I've programmed many of these new restorations at Twin Cities venues such as The Heights Theater, the Trylon Cinema, the Main Cinema, and Northrop's Carlson Family Stage in collaboration with an organization that I co-founded with Michelle Baroody, Archives on Screen, Twin Cities. I've also helped conduct a demographic survey of silent film audiences today, which received over 3,000 completed responses. I presented our initial findings at the Domitor Conference in Vienna last summer, and we (Russell Zych, Laura Horak, and I) are working on adapting the survey results into an article for the Journal of Film Preservation.

I have focused my efforts thus far on three objectives:

1. Curating new silent film discoveries for Twin Cities audiences to help bridge the gap between the University and local film communities.
2. Interviewing archivists, programmers, musicians, and spectators about their participation in silent film revival culture at the international events I attend.
3. Collecting demographic data to track the rapid expansion of silent film appreciation among new, younger, and more diverse audiences. One output of this project will be a monograph ("Twenty-First Century Silent Film Culture"), but right now I'm prioritizing a different monograph ("Archives of Feminist Film Comedy") and focusing my efforts on curatorial work and community programming.

What challenges have you faced?

The main challenges I've faced thus far have all stemmed from the sheer breadth and abundance of relevant materials: new prints rediscovered and restored, collections to visit, experts and audiences to speak with, and unmissable events to attend. It is beautiful but often overwhelming. I have had to make difficult decisions about which offerings to prioritize. In our initial demographic survey, we also did not successfully connect with as diverse an audience of respondents as we had initially planned, which we will account for in the next iteration of our survey.

How is your project making a difference in the world?

I do feel that this project is making a difference. I have traveled far and wide to curate silent film programs and introduce screenings. Recently in West Texas, I spoke with a student who said it gave her hope to see images in the archive of queer mischief and irreverent gender play from over a hundred years ago that had miraculously survived the ravages of time, obsolescence, and decay. Why have we forgotten these vital silent film histories that attest to the popular explosion of progressive representation and cultural experimentation in the early twentieth century?

As we face an onslaught of apocalyptic challenges in our own world, we can take courage from the archival past, which bears witness to the history of human resilience, collective solidarity, and cultural play. My greatest hope for this project is to make people feel open and curious (and even delighted) by their encounters with silent cinema, which I deeply believe has the power to shake something loose in the present. My relationship with silent film changes what I believe is possible for the future.

How has the award made a difference to your career?

It reminds me every day how lucky I am to dedicate my career to things that I care about and find pleasurable!

What partnerships has this award helped you develop and nurture?

Archives on Screen Twin Cities, which is supported by the UMN Imagine Fund. We have curated three annual festivals at the Main Cinema and program a quarterly series at the Trylon Cinema.

At UMN, my work has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study (as an AHD co-chair, collaboratives co-convener, and events grant recipient).

The demographic survey was supported by a $200,000 Canadian SSHRC grant, which also funded the production of "Cinema's First Nasty Women," a 4-disc DVD/Blu-ray set produced by Kino Lorber.

My travels were further supported by a Grant-in-Aid from the U.

What's next?

The greatest challenge is to secure additional sources of funding so I can continue to do this work. I have had more success programming events at local and international, dedicated film venues than at my own university. My long-term goal is to help establish a University Cinema and Film & Media Research Center at UMN so we can do more educational outreach and regular programming on campus.

This story was edited by Madeline McClure (BA ‘25, English).