The AFI Catalogue of Feature Film’s “Women They Talk About” project supports unprecedented empirical research about the role of gender throughout the first century of the American film industry, 1893-1993. With generous grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and The David and Lura Lovell Foundation, the project uses AFI’s comprehensive data to secure early female filmmakers in the historical canon. “Women They Talk About,” named after the 1928 feature film, uses data as a narrative tool to tell the true story of women as forerunners in the film industry.

Through the NEH grant, Jill partnered with AFI to create a 9th - 12th grade information literacy and cinema literacy curriculum to be integrated into any History, ELA, or media arts classroom across the U.S. The curriculum has three objectives: for students to develop research skills by using the AFI catalog and other online databases; for students to critically analyze the film “Shoes” by Lois Weber (1916); and for students to explore the important role that women played in the development of the motion picture industry. The curriculum can be viewed on the National Endowment for the Humanities educational website, here.