Lois Weber

Lois Weber 1879 1939 was a true American auteur on par with D W Griffith A director actress screenwriter and producer of mostly silent films she was the first American woman to direct a fulllength feature film 1914s The Merchant of Venice the first American woman director to own her own film studio and one of the first film directors to experiment with sound Weber pioneered the splitscreen technique in the 1913 short film Suspense and Hypocrites featured the first nonpornographic fullfrontal female nude scene in 1915 Many of her films tackled social issues like abortion poverty discrimination and religion drawing the attention of censors Only a fraction of her films estimated to number between 200 and 400 were preserved In 2022 the American Film Institute announced a new initiative titled Behind the Veil after one of Webers lost films The initiative will document 6000 short films from the silent and early sound eras to uncover the innovative contributions of female and BIPOC storytellers