Maggie Hennefeld, Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, has literally written the book(s) on early cinematic feminist humor. Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema and Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes tackle similar themes to those explored in her five picks from the 1890s, which reveal the expansive possibilities of the earliest days of film, from anarchic comedy to those who worked behind the camera.

Maggie is also a curator of the 4-disc DVD/Blu-ray collection Cinema's First Nasty Women and co-director of Archives on Screen, Twin Cities. Her socials are:
Twitter: @magshenny
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hennefem/
Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/hennefem.bsky.social


Visit https://www.the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own five favorites of the 1800s for a final tally in the season finale!

Films and resources mentioned:

• The Boxing Cats (1894) - William K.L. Dickson and William Heise
• The Cabbage Fairy (1896) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• The Cabbage Fairy (1900) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Something Good/Negro Kiss (1898) - William Selig
• The Four Troublesome Heads (1898) - Georges Méliès
• The Dairy Maid's Revenge (1899) - Frank S. Armitage
• Fredd Ott's Sneeze (1894) - William K.L. Dickson
• Carmencita (1894) - William K.L. Dickson
• Sioux Ghost Dance (1894) - William K.L. Dickson
• Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018) - Pamela B. Green
• Pierrette's Escapades (1900) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Algie, the Miner (1912) - Alice Guy-Blaché, Harry Schenk, and Edward Warren
• The Pill Pounder (1923) - Gregory La Cava
• Madame's Cravings (1907) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Moonlight (2016) - Barry Jenkins
• If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) - Barry Jenkins
• Mary Jane's Mishap (1903) - George Albert Smith
• The Man with the Rubber Head (1901) - Georges Méliès
• The Big Swallow (1901) - James Williamson
• Léontine's Battery (1910) - Unknown
• "Do You Believe in Fairies? Cabbages, Victorian Memes, and the Birth of Cinema: Seeing Sapphic Sexuality in the Silent Era" - Kiki Loveday
• Women Film Pioneers Project
• "The Cinema of Racialized Attraction(s): The John C. Rice–May Irwin Kiss and Something Good—Negro Kiss" - Allyson Nadia Field
• "The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde" - Tom Gunning
• Silent London
• The Loft Cinema