Ladies First

Secret Cinema shows the fairer sex some love.

by Aly Semigran

screening

Women have always had to find their place on the big screen. The male mind-set has ruled the film industry from the very beginning, right up to, well, Showgirls. Seeing as March is Women's History Month, what better time for Secret Cinema to give props to the ladies of film from the past? This Friday's "girl films" — not to be confused with bawdy "girlie films" from the '20s and '30s and definitely not to be compared with modern "chick flicks" — are shorts ranging from three to 30 minutes that were made for and about women, originally shown in both theaters and classrooms. The movies span from the 1930s to the '70s, a period in which women's rights were still being figured out.

"It was a mostly male-dominated industry then," says Jay Schwartz, the programmer and archivist of Secret Cinema. "It's safe to assume not many women were behind the camera during these eras." In fact, only one of the 10 or so shorts on the program, 1977's The Ancient Art of Belly Dancing, was produced, in part, by a woman. The others serve primarily as snapshots into women's roles during very different times: 1943's She Serves Abroad is a newsreel about female participation in World War II, while Women's Wrestling Matches, made in the '50s, is, well, pretty self-explanatory.

"The idea of sexism in these films is in the eye of the beholder," says Schwartz. "They're pretty dated, but they're still very fun to watch." The earliest of his picks, Mother Melodies, from the 1930s, features sentimental songs about moms, performed by singer Jack Arthur and Philly-born organist Lew White. "It's the strangest-looking of the bunch," he says. "It's not just from another time, it's from another planet."

One of the latest ones, Love Carefully, was made to show in girls' health classes. "You could tell the filmmakers were trying to be less formal and stodgy in the '70s," he says. "They have this friendly hippie narrator using bad language to try and get down to the kids' level. It surprisingly winds up being the most dated."

(aly.semigran@citypaper.net)

Secret Cinema Celebrates Women's History Month with Girl Films, Fri., March 21, 8 p.m., $7, Moore College of Art & Design, 1916 Race St., 215-965-4099, thesecretcinema.com.