1930’s Hollywood: Women in the Sun & Shadows with Imogen Sara Smith

Writer and film historian Imogen Sara Smith will explore the role of women in shaping one of cinema’s most volatile and memorable decades: 1930’s Hollywood. The thirties found Hollywood navigating the Great Depression, technologies that would transform the medium, censorship, an influx of European emigres, the triumph of the studio system, and the evolution of genres. Through it all, women played powerful roles behind the scenes within the studios, while also dominating screens with bold and transgressive performances. See how women shaped the rich delights of this complex and alluring era that still invades our dreams.

View the entire Fall 2023 Alumni Lecture Series here.

Imogen Sara Smith is a film critic and historian based in New York City. She is the author of two books, In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City and Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy, and her work has appeared in Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Cineaste, Reverse Shot, The Criterion Collection, and many other venues. She is a regular speaker on The Criterion Channel, on disc releases from Criterion, Kino Lorber, and other distributors, and at national and international film festivals. She has taught courses on film noir at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Learn more about Imogen’s upcoming workshop, The Dream Kingdom: Hollywood 1934-1939 (Online), here.

Our 2023 Alumni Lecture series is brought to you by First National Wealth Management.