Fashion in Film Festival: If Looks Could Kill will open at New York's Museum of the Moving Image on May 4th 2012. Find out more here.

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Full programme for Fashion in Film Festival 2012 in New York released. Find out more here.

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Fashion in Film's Kinoscopes available to tour. Find out more about their London and UK installations.

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Limited edition catalogue
The 2nd Fashion in Film Festival If Looks Could Kill limited edition catalogue is selling out fast. Available online, and in store at Tate Modern book shop, BFI Southbank Film Store and Cinéphilia.

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Texts now published online
All texts from our first catalogue (now sold out) are now available here.

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credits, sponsors and partners

Underground Opulence
Friday, April 15
7.00 P.M.
Total running time: 130 mins.

Bursting with color, this program reconnects the avant-garde queer sensibility of underground film not with its literal inspirations (Hollywood icons such as Alla Nazimova, Marlene Dietrich, or Maria Montez) but rather with some genres in early film which—with their ornamental costumes and décor—anticipate some of the richness of the underground’s camp aestheticism.

Introduced by David Schwartz and Marketa Uhlirova
Live music by Donald Sosin

Tit for Tat (La Peine du talion)
Dir. Gaston Velle, Pathé Frères, 1906, France

Metempsychosis (Métempsycose)
Dir. Segundo de Chomón, Pathé Frères, 1907, France

Puce Moment
Dir. Kenneth Anger
With Yvonne Marquis, 1949
Costumes from Kenneth Anger’s collection

The Pearl Fisher (Le pêcheur de perles)
Dir. Ferdinand Zecca, Pathé Frères, 1907, France

Normal Love
Dir. Jack Smith, 1963
With Diana Baccus, Mario Montez, Beverly Grant
Costumes by Jack Smith and actors
Print courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York

Secrets of the East (Geheimnisse des Orients/ Shéhérazade)
Saturday, April 16
2.00 P.M

Germany, France 1928. Dir Alexandre Volkoff
With Marcella Albani, D. Dmitriev, Brigitte Helm.
Costume design Boris Bilinsky and sets by Ivan Lochakoff, c.126min
Print courtesy of National Film Center, Tokyo

With live piano accompaniment from Stephen Horne.

Male and Female
Saturday, April 16
5.00 P.M

Dir. Cecil B. Demille, 1919, 97 mins
With Gloria Swanson, Thomas Meighan
Costume design by Clare West and Mitchell Leisen

With introductory notes by Inga Fraser, Associate Curator of Fashion in Film.

Double Bill on Costume and Excess (Dedicated to Kenneth Anger)
Saturday, April 16
7.00 P.M

“Because America is the Pleasure Dome of the world... the materialistic dream is so strong that you have to be of the purity of Parsifal to banish Klingsor’s castle... there’ll always be a penalty to pay for these artificial paradises.” —Kenneth Anger

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Dir. Kenneth Anger, 1954/1966, 38 mins
With Samson De Brier, Marjorie Cameron, Joan Whitney, Anaïs Nin
Costumes and sets by Kenneth Anger, Samson de Brier

The Devil is a Woman
Dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1935, 76 mins
With Marlene Dietrich, Cesar Romero, Lionel Atwill
Costumes by Travis Banton, wardrobe by Henry West

Dreams of Darkness and Colour
Sunday, April 17
2.00 P.M., total running time without talk c. 80min

This program explores the role of costume in several silent cinema journeys into darkness, all of which are executed in color.

With an introduction by Eugenia Paulicelli
Live music by Stephen Horne

The Red Spectre (Le Spectre rouge)
Dir. Segundo de Chomón, Pathé Frères, 1907, France

The Pillar of Fire (La Danse du feu)
Dir. Georges Méliès, 1899, France With Jeanne d’Alcy Costumes and sets by Georges Méliès
(Hand-colored)

The Butterflies (Le Farfalle)
Dir. unknown, 1907, Italy
(Tinted and hand-colored)

Rapsodia Satanica
Dir. Nino Oxilia, 1915, Italy
With Lyda Borelli, Andrea Habay, Ugo Bazzini
Alba’s gowns by Mariano Fortuny (Tinted and stencil-colored)

Pink Narcissus
Sunday, April 17
4.30 P.M.

Dir. James Bidgood, 1971, 71 mins
With Bobby Kendall, Don Brooks
Costume and set design by James Bidgood

Golden Butterfly (Der Goldene Schmetterling)
Sunday, April 17
7.00 P.M.

Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1926, Austria, 77 mins
With Lili Damita, Hermann Leffler

With live accompaniment from Donald Sosin.

Steven Arnold Special
Friday, April 22
7.00 P.M., total running time c. 60min

The artist, photographer, and filmmaker Steven Arnold was a muse and model of Salvador Dalí who always referred to Arnold as his prince. Andy Warhol star Holly Woodlawn claimed that if Warhol’s Factory was typical New York, then the circle around Arnold in Los Angeles was Versailles. Arnold’s work provides a fascinating bridge between the early cross-gender experiments of Claude Cahun and Pierre Molinier and what the media theorist Gene Youngblood termed the ‘polymorphous subterranean world of unisexual transvestism’ that he saw as a hallmark of the emerging ‘synaesthetic cinema’ of the 1960s. The screening also pays homage to an innovative—yet often overlooked—poet of the Beat Generation, ruth weiss, who stars in all the films featured. weiss worked with Arnold in the late-1960s, and among many other jobs she did to support her writing career, was also that of a chorus girl.

The program will be introduced by Stuart Comer

Various Incarnations of a Tibetan Seamstress 1969, 10 mins
With ruth weiss, Pat Eddy Lowe and Stephen Kelemen
Costumes by Steven Arnold

Messages, Messages 1972, 23 mins
With ruth weiss, The Joseph, Pandora
Costumes by Steven Arnold

The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique 1967, 15 mins
With Sonia Magill and ruth weiss
Costumes by Steven Arnold

Cobra Woman
Saturday, April 23
2.00 P.M.

Dir. Robert Siodmak, 1944, 117 mins.
With Maria Montez, John Hall, Sabu
Costumes by Vera West, sets Russel A. Gausman, Ira Webb

Sensuous Pleasures
Saturday, April 23
4.30 P.M.

Flaming Creatures
Dir. Jack Smith, 1963, 43 mins
With Francis Francine, Sheila Bick, Mario Montez, Joel Markman
Costumes by Jack Smith and actors

The Most Wonderful Fans of the World (De mooiste waaiers ter wereld)
Dir. unknown, 1927, Netherlands/France, 12 mins.
With Pépa Bonafé; Komarova, Korgine, Sergine; John Tiller Follies Stars

Drag Glamor
Saturday, April 23
7.00 P.M.

This program pairs Jose Rodriguez-Soltero’s lavish Lupe with Ron Rice’s landmark psychedelic masterpiece Chumlum. It features two of the most accomplished uses of superimposition in underground film, transporting drag glamor into a psychedelic, cubist-like dimension.

Lupe
Dir. Jose Rodriguez-Soltero, 1966, 50 mins
With Mario Montez, Charles Ludlam
Costumes by Montez Creations

Chumlum
Dir. Ron Rice, 1964, 45 mins.
With Jack Smith, Beverly Grant, Mario Montez

The screenings will be followed with a panel discussion about the legacy of the queer aesthetic where the spectacle of fashion plays a dominant role, from the shimmering dresses in Kenneth Anger’s Puce Moment to Jack Smith’s reimaging of the 1940s’ Hollywood Orientalism, to the stunning, surreal imagery of Steven Arnold.

Marketa Uhlirova, Ronald Gregg, Ela Troyano, Stuart Comer and Agosto Machado will explore the designs and production of these visionary spectacles, the wearing and posturing of costume and make-up, and the cinematography that brought these visionary spectacles to excite and haunt our imaginations.

Click here to listen to the discussion.

The Merry Widow
Sunday, April 24
2.00 P.M.

Dirs. Erich von Stroheim, Monta Bell, 1925, 137 mins
With Mae Murray, John Gilbert
Costumes by Adrian, costume supervision by Richard Day and Erich von Stroheim; set decoration Cedric Gibbons and Richard Day

Salomé
Sunday, April 24
4.30 P.M.

Dir Charles Bryant, 1923, 74 mins
With Alla Nazimova, Mitchell Lewis
Costume and sets Natacha Rambova

Fashions of 1934
Sunday, April 24
6.30 P.M.

Dir William Dieterle, 1934, 78 mins
With Alla Nazimova, Mitchell Lewis
Costume by Orry-Kelly, musical numbers by Busby Berkeley.

Presented by the Center for the Humanities, Concentration in Fashion Studies, Film Studies, Women’s Studies and the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies in conjunction with the Fashion in Film Festival.

The Graduate Center seminars will bring together international scholars with an interest in fashion and film to debate issues of costume, movement and spectacle in cinema. The seminars will also screen rare footage ranging from early European and American film, to underground cinema and contemporary fashion film. Free entry. Tickets at the door.

Free entry. Tickets at the door.

This seminar will look at clothing and adornment in film as a device of pleasure and sartorial knowledge; one that has had a long history in shaping cinema’s aesthetic languages. It will articulate some of the connections between early, experimental and underground cinema, as well as the contemporary “fashion film” and more, asking questions about stillness and motion, the material specificities of clothing on the screen, and the contexts (technological and other) of their production and dissemination that allowed for dress to be a prominent player in new experiments in image-making.

Moderator: Eugenia Paulicelli
Respondent: Robert Singer

Speakers:
Marketa Uhlirova: Costume as a Special Effect: Early Cinema and Beyond
Antonia Lant: The Painted Lady (1912) by D. W. Griffith
Ronald Gregg: Orientalism and Fashion in 1960s Underground Film
Penny Martin: Fashion Film and Before

Since the beginning of cinema in the late-19th century, the role of costume, fabrics and fashion within has been crucial in conveying an aesthetic dimension and establishing a new sensorial and emotional relationship with viewers. Through the interaction of fashion, costume and film it is possible to gauge a deeper understanding of the cinematic, its complex history, and the mechanisms underlying modernity, the construction of gender, urban transformations, consumption, technological and aesthetic experimentation.

Moderator: Amy Herzog
Respondent: Jerry Carlson

Speakers:
Caroline Evans: Early Fashion Shows and the "Cinema of Attractions", c. 1900-1925
Michelle Tollini: "Exploitation" in Early Cinema: Poiret and Lucille on Film
Drake Stutesman: Spectacular Hats! A New Kind of Identity in a New Kind of Love (1963)

'Secrets of the Orient': Duration, Movement and Costume in the Cinematic Experience of the East
11 - 12 November 2011
Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University

Borrowing the title of the 1928 German-French studio spectacular, this symposium will expand on the Orientalist strand in Birds of Paradise. It will consider the movement, duration, texture and other aspects of “dressing” film through costume, sets and props as having played a crucial role in defining Western visions of the East throughout the 20th century. It will also address the use of costume as an important aesthetic device in Asian cinema. Participating speakers will include Charles Musser, Anapuma Kapse, Amy Herzog, Alistair O’Neill, Eugenia Paulicelli, Becky Conekin and Ronald Gregg.

For more details, see here.