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Women in the box : female projectionists in post-war British cinemas
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Wallace, Richard James, Harrison, Rebecca and Brunsdon, Charlotte (2018) Women in the box : female projectionists in post-war British cinemas. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 15 (1). pp. 46-65. doi:10.3366/jbctv.2018.0401
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2018.0401
Abstract
Cinema projection is usually understood to be a male-dominated occupation, with the projection box characterised as a gendered space separate from the more typically feminine front-of-house roles. Although this is a fairly accurate representation, it risks eliminating all traces of women's labour in the projection box. Previous work by David R. Williams (1997) and Rebecca Harrison (2016) has addressed the role of women projectionists during wartime, and this article begins to excavate a hidden history of women projectionists in a peacetime context. The article uses oral testimony from two women – Florence Barton and Joan Pearson – who worked as projectionists in the mid-twentieth century. Their accounts are presented in the article as two portraits, which aim to convey a sense of the women's everyday lives in the projection box, as well as think about implications that their stories have for our understanding of women's roles in projection more broadly. Of particular significance to both Barton and Pearson are the relationships that they had with their male colleagues, the possibilities afforded for career progression (and the different paths taken by the women) and the nature of projection work. The women's repeated assertions that they were expected to do the same jobs as their male counterparts form a key aspect of the interviews, which suggest there is scope for further investigation of women's labour specifically in projection boxes and in cinemas more generally.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | T Technology > TR Photography | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Film and Television Studies | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Motion picture projection -- History -- 20th century, Motion picture projectionists -- History -- 20th century, Motion picture theaters -- Employees -- History -- 20th century, Women in the motion picture industry -- History -- 20th century | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of British Cinema and Television | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Edinburgh University Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1743-4521 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | January 2018 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 15 | ||||||||
| Number: | 1 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 46-65 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.3366/jbctv.2018.0401 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access | ||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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