Professor Virginia Heath will present a paper with film clips at the HERITAGE, COMMUNITY, ARCHIVES CONFERENCE, Sheffield Hallam University being held on 12th/ 13th June 2023.
The paper, ‘Using Archive Fragments To Creatively Reimagine Gaps, Silences and Absences’, is part of the Heritage, Archives and Creative Practice Panel on the 13th of June. The presentation is part of Virginia’s ongoing research for her feature documentary project, ‘Mae West: Boxer In A Corset’ which looks at Mae West’s relationship as a playwright to Queer Culture in 1920s New York, before she became a film star. It explores the process of working with key archive fragments to creatively reimagine Mae West’s bold, subversive portrayal of 1920s Drag Balls in her plays, and the conservative backlash which ensued. The intention is to turn an absence of moving image archive, into presence, to tell an untold story with powerful resonance for today’s ‘culture wars’.