UPCOMING EVENTS
EXHIBITIONS
FILM COSTUME AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
Curator/Designer
Costume exhibit: the opening of the Barrymore Film Center, Fort Lee, New Jersey, October 2021
October 2021 - January 2022
Costumes from the Gene London Collection
THE BARRYMORES
Costume co-ordinator
Exhibit for the opening of the Barrymore Film Center
www.barrymorefilmcenter.com
CONFERENCES
THEDA BARA AND HER LEGACY
Conference Organizer
Barrymore Film Center, Fort Lee, New Jersey
FILMS
HAT DOCUMENTARY
Writer
based on the book, Hat: Origins, Language, Style
Directors: Roberta Friedman, Dan Lowenthal
TALKS
SMASHED CEILINGS
Co-organizer
Women In Conversation at the New York Public Library
New York Women in Film and Television Archive
PAST EVENTS - SELECTED
PANEL
BBC World Service
The Forum
Famous Hats in History, panel discussion
December 31, 2020; January 2 and January 3, 2021
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszjwk
LECTURES
SUPER FLY, MALE COSTUME AND MELODRAMA
Critical Costume Conference, (Norway/online due to COVID-19), 2020
Melodramatic tropes appear in the costumes of Super Fly, the 1972 African American crime film about New York’s narcotic trade. It has a nineteenth century melodrama understory - that of an individual fighting an oppressive social system – but Super Fly’s reliance on presentation also places it in melodrama. The lead character’s exceptional costumes, designed by Nate Adams, create a new amalgamation of crime paradigm, material excess, bold masculinity, emotional pathos and melodramatic narrative that has roots in centuries of African American use of subversion and protest through clothing and costume
THE GAY COUPLE IN TELEVISIONS’S PERRY MASON
New York University, New York, 2019
Perry Mason(1957–1966, CBS-TV) is known for its formulaic plots—attorney Mason (Raymond Burr) defends an innocent client and forces the real murderer to confess in a courtroom finale. With its stylish noir filming, outdoor locations,and deep background characterizations, the series arguably also featured a prescient queer subtext. Burr was a gay man who led a covert life, but on the show, Mason is consistently paired with his investigator, Paul Drake (William Hopper), in harmonious, sometimes domestic contexts —especially notable in the 1962 episode, The Case of the Borrowed Baby.
THE SENTENCES OF DJUNA BARNES
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 2015
Djuna Barnes “makes the common unusual.”
James Joyce
“The perfume her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh,
fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry,
overcast with the odorof the oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea,
making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire.”
Nightwood
This talk shows how a deep deconstruction of even a single sentence in the lush language of Djuna Barnes’ novel, Nightwood, reveals a profound and astute understanding of people’s lives.
FILM COSTUME CONFERENCES
Founder/Co-Organizer, With Nancy Deihl, New York University:
FILM COSTUME/STATE OF THE ART
Honoring the Fort Lee film industry where American cinema began – with today’s artists, scholars, filmmakers and practitioners on topics such as avant-garde art, counterfeiting, animation, and fashion icons.
FILM COSTUME/RENDERING REALITIES
Exploring costume’s role in cinema’s multiple constructions of history and their impact on culture - with today’s costume designers, hip hop artists, museum curators and auctioneers on topics from Hindi film stars to a painter’s influence on 1910s cinema.
FILM COSTUME/ WHO DESIGNED MARILYN’S DRESS?:
IMPACT, CRAFT, AND FUTURE OF FILM COSTUME
Honoring the great costume house, Tirelli Costumi, in Rome, with guest speaker
Tirelli director Dino Trappetti, and today’s costume designers, fabricators, filmmakers, scholars, and students,