A District Attorney's outspoken stand on abortion gets him in trouble with the local community.

Previously unseen and long overdue for the spotlight, this film remains one of screen legend Lois Weber's finest creations and a landmark in women's cinema. Ballet dancer and choreographer Anna Pavlova lends her presence to Weber and Phillips Smalley's story of Fenella, a wordless fisher-girl living under the Spanish occupation of Naples in the mid-17th century, as she is seduced by a Spanish nobleman. However, when the nobleman betrays and abandons her, Fenella's broken heart inspires her brother to lead a rebellion against their overlords and free their people from rule. After a century's worth of work in restoration, THE DUMB GIRL OF PORTICI returns with a brilliant score by John Sweeney to delight modern audiences.

More women worked in film during its first two decades than at any time since. Unfortunately, many early women filmmakers have been largely written out of film history, their contributions undervalued. This necessary and timely collection highlights the work of 14 of early cinema's most innovative and influential women directors, re-writing and celebrating their rightful place in film history. International in scope, this groundbreaking collection features over 10 hours of material, comprised of 24 films spanning 1902-1943, including many rare titles not widely available until now, from shorts to feature films, live-action to animation, commercial narratives to experimental works. Directors include Alice Guy Blaché, Lois Weber, Mabel Normand, Madeline Brandeis, Germaine Dulac, Olga Preobrazhenskaia, Marie-Louise Iribe, Lotte Reiniger, Claire Parker, Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport), Leni Riefenstahl, Mary Ellen Bute, Dorothy Arzner, and Maya Deren.

Weber stars as a young mother who is home alone when a burglar enters her house in this visually captivating and stylistically advanced thriller. The chase scene, the use of split-screen, and the shots of the burglar ascending into the house are all powerful visuals that proclaim Lois Weber's skill as a film director. Music by Frederick Hodges.

Weber also provided the script for this short family drama, which follows a discontented Civil War veteran who leaves the old soldier's home and moves in with his wealthy nephew. Focusing on the tensions that arise as a result, DISCONTENT is an incisive exploration of change, family dynamics, class, and happiness. Music by Judith Rosenberg.

The last film made under the banner of Lois Weber Productions, this moral drama, also written by Weber, tackles issues of class and economic inequality, "exploring the 'blot' of society's disregard for its educators and clergymen," according to Weber biographer Shelley Stamp. The real focus of the story is the female protagonists and the anxieties, desires, and prejudices wrapped up in their economic positions. Music by Rodney Sauer and the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

INVERTED NARRATIVES is part of the retrospective UNSEEN CINEMA that explores long-forgotten American experimental cinema.. In this collection, early directors D.W. Griffith and Lois Weber develop the radical language of cinema narrative through audience-friendly melodramas made for nickelodeon theaters. Experimental fantasies are depicted in such independent productions as MOONLAND (c.1926), LULLABY (1929), and THE BRIDGE (1929-30). Depression era films by socially-conscious filmmakers reshape drama as demonstrated in Josef Berne's brooding BLACK DAWN (1933) and Strand and Hurwitz's biting NATIVE LAND (1937-41): each pictures a raw reality. Parody and satire find their mark in Theodore Huff's LITTLE GEEZER (1932) and Barlow, Hay and LeRoy's EVEN AS YOU AND I (1937). David Bradley's SREDNI VASHTAR BY SAKI (1940-43) boasts an inadvertent post-modern attitude.. 12 films by featured directors: Roger Barlow, Lionel Berman, Josef Berne, G.W. "Billy" Bitzer, David Bradley, Boris Deutsch, Frontier Films, Mike Gordon, D.W. Griffith, Harry Hay, Theodore Huff, Leo Hurwitz, Irving Lerner, Ben Maddow, Neil McQuire, NYKino, William A. O'Connor, Le Roy Robbins, Philips Smalley, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, Seymour Stern, Willard Van Dyke, Charles Vidor, Lois Weber, Christopher Young.. Curated by Bruce Posner and produced by David Shepard. "Just one of the amazing things this series of early American avant-garde films drives home is just how far into the belly of the Hollywood beast the experimental filmmakers progressed." - The Guardian. "The creative explosion that took place at the margins of Hollywood." - Le Monde

Narratives from 1912-1913: D.W. Griffith's For his son, Lois Weber's Suspense, and Thomas Ince's The heart of an Indian, all mastered from beautiful 35mm film elements.