Through the Keyhole: Shorts Program

You will never guess what you will see when you peer through the keyhole of early cinema!

From same-sex couples dancing in each other’s arms to gender-inverted worlds where mannish women go out drinking while their feminine husbands stay home with the baby, these short films exuberantly present the gender and sexual chaos of cinema’s first years.

Meet lesbian comedian Fay Tincher, who lived openly with her female partner in Hollywood. She plays a rowdy cowgirl who gets sent to an all-girls school! And Gilbert Sarony—a famous female impersonator from Broadway—manages to land her man after a rowdy chase! See an unknown dancer imitate the famous “butterfly dance” of Loie Fuller, who has been called the “lesbian electric fairy of the belle epoque,” and the impressive physique of Sandow, the early 20th century’s most famous muscleman. We end with a sci-fi film set “one hundred years from now” when “men have become like women and women like men”—except the women look suspiciously like stylish lesbians from the 1920s—and a flapper comedy in which a secret society initiation goes hilariously wrong.