Musarc, one of UK’s foremost experimental choral ensembles will conjure a live vocal and rhythmic soundscape for this mesmerising kaleidoscope of feminine imagery: women adorned or posing with floral arrangements, examining and manufacturing blooms, and magically conjuring or emerging from flowers. Others portray fairies and women in elaborate costumes personifying flowers and their pollinators, like butterflies and bees. Spanning various pre-World War I genres, including trick films and some of the first fashion newsreels and industrial process films, these shorts reflect 19th-century notions of femininity as synonymous with beauty, sensuality and enchantment. Yet, the various ornamental human-nature hybrids that populate many of these films also reveal potent undercurrents of ‘dangerous’ female exoticism, eroticism and power.  

The programme features several new digital restorations from hand-coloured and stencil-coloured nitrate prints, including a sneak peek into some of the films included in Fantastic Flowers, the recent joint restoration project between Eye Filmmuseum, the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, and Filmarchiv Austria, to be premiered at this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in June.

The screening is followed by a panel discussion with Musarc, joined by the programme curators Marketa Uhlirova and Elif Rongen. Moderated by festival co-curator Dal Chodha. 

With special thanks to EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam, FPA Classics Paris, Les Archives françaises du film (CNC), Cinematek Brussels, Gaumont-Pathé Archives, Filmoteca de Catalunya and Filmoteca Española.

Content warning: some films include exoticising images that may be culturally insensitive or offensive.