THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2024 | 7:00 PM
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center

Film festival events will kick off Thursday, April 11 at 7 PM with a presentation by award-winning author and researcher Mindy Johnson, who will talk about her rediscovery of Bessie Mae Kelley, the first female animator in the United States. Kelley was raised in Caribou, Maine, and went on to have a remarkable career in the early days of animation, beginning in 1917. Her work includes early animated films such as Gasoline Alley and Flower Fairies, as well as animated maps and titles for Donald B. MacMillan’s films.

Johnson’s research focuses on the often-invisible women who played a significant role in the creation of early animated films. Her current work builds on her recent discovery of Bessie Mae Kelley whose surviving films are the earliest known hand-drawn animations by a woman. Johnson will talk about the exciting new developments in her ongoing efforts to recover the story of Kelley’s career. 

Kelley's work remained largely unknown until her collection was rediscovered and two of her films were restored by Mindy Johnson in 2022. Johnson discovered Kelley in a series of images of male animators from the early 1920s. Other historians had previously assumed her to be a secretary or cleaning woman.

FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2024 | 7:00 PM
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center

On Friday, April 12 at 7 PM we will focus on contemporary Inuit filmmakers using archival footage in their work. Mark Turner, an historian and media archivist, Willi Lempert, an anthropologist working with Indigenous filmmakers, will lead the dialogue as we screen two short films: Holly Andersen’s Hebron Relocation, and Asinnajaq’s Three Thousand. Each film takes a different approach to using historic footage of the Arctic, and we look forward to an interesting discussion of the ways Indigenous filmmakers are repurposing historic film footage in their own works.

SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 2024 | 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
M129 Cinema, Mills Hall

On Saturday, April 13 we will peer into archives, with an all-day symposium. Presentations will begin with film historian and archivist Audrey Kupferberg, who will talk about her decades of work with the Arctic Museum’s film collections. Attention will then turn to women involved in early Arctic films as Mindy Johnson talks about Bessie Mae Kelley’s work on Donald MacMillan’s films and film archivist Audrey Amidon (Bowdoin Class of 2003) introduces the films of Louise Boyd, who led expeditions to the Arctic in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

In the afternoon Nunatsivut (Labrador) will be the focus. Arctic Museum director Susan Kaplan will talk about MacMillan’s lecture film Under the Northern Lights, which features his work in Labrador, and Mark Turner will discuss his efforts to make archival media available in northern communities. We will end with Genevieve LeMoine, the Arctic Museum’s curator, discussing the films taken on Donald MacMillan’s Crocker Land Expedition (1913-1917), some of the earliest surviving footage from Greenland.

All the presentations will be accompanied by fascinating and rarely seen archival footage, and there will be ample time between presentations for questions and discussion.

The complete schedule for Saturday is below.