IT GIRLS:
Sirens of the
Silent Screen
A series of six events celebrating the silent femmes of early cinema
After a few years developing posters for Silent Sundays , I was invited by curator Alicia Fletcher to join her in programming the event. Together we made a number of changes to the series. The first of these was to rename it Silent Revue, to better align it to its home, the historic Revue Cinema. We also started selecting the films based on a unifying theme for the season.
This new approach resulted in IT GIRLS:
Step aside gentlemen! This season, Silent Revue shines a spotlight on the first ladies of Hollywood. From the legendary to the unjustly forgotten, we celebrate the trailblazing women who worked both in front of and behind the camera during silent cinema’s heyday.
Since men like Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton and tend to steal the spotlight in the world of silent film, we decided to refocus that light on the first ladies of Hollywood with IT GIRLS: Sirens of the Silent Screen.
From the legendary to the unjustly forgotten, each event focused on one groundbreaking woman. With IT GIRLS we offer audiences a look at the dynamic women who worked both in front of and behind the camera during the heyday of the silent cinema.
In previous years we had produced separate marketing materials from the limited edition posters we sold at screenings, but to make the most of our limited budget, we combined the two for IT GIRLS.
By increasing the print run of the commemorative posters we were able to use the extra posters to advertise the events in stores and public spaces across several West Toronto neighbourhoods. The look of these prints also carried over into our online promotion of the programme, which we ramped up considerably for the season.
IT GIRLS was an unqualified triumph. Each of the six screenings was packed with an enthusiastic audience that was quite different from any we'd seen before: Many of IT GIRLS' attendees had never seen a silent film before attending the series. And though we continued to produce posters for select events, we found that targeted advertising using Silent Revue's strong social media presence was ultimately more effective than our grassroots efforts.