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

Nikolaj Kunsthal
5 - 22 May 2011

Taking our cue from the current explosion of fashion film, this programme expands on themes explored as part of Birds of Paradise to look at the historical precedents of this new 'genre' of video work.

At Nikolaj Kunsthal, Fashion in Film brought together early films from pioneering figures including Georges Méliès, Alice Guy-Blaché and Segundo de Chomón to contextualise contemporary fashion industry practices. These films are characterised by the energetic manipulation of fabric through dance; the recurrent motifs of transformation, revelation and display; and the glorious tint or stencil methods of colouring.

Through this selection of shorts from the 1890s and 1900s, we explored how fashion or costume in film has been used, then as now, as an important means to showcase cutting-edge technology and how clothing is used to ensure aesthetic concerns are privileged over narrative.

The results of experimentation with an emergent form, the directors who produced this work at the turn of the 20th century have much in common with directors producing fashion film at the turn of the 21st century. In both ‘genres’, fashion and costume are the means by which filmmakers have produced unrivalled spectacles to dazzle their audiences.

14 May 2011 - 19:00 Associate Curator Inga Fraser introduces the programme, followed by discussion on contemporary fashion film with designers Vilsbøl de Arce.

The Pearl Fisher (Le Pêcheur de perles). Dir Ferdinand Zecca. Courtesy Lobster Films.

Danse du Papillon. Dir Alice Guy-Blaché, 1938. Courtesy Lobster Films.

Annabelle Butterfly Dance No.3
USA 1895. Dir William Heise, Edison Manufacturing Company.
Black and white.

The Pearl Fisher (Le Pêcheur de perles)
France 1907. Dir Ferdinand Zecca, Pathé Frères.
Hand-coloured.

The Butterflies (Le Farfalle)
Italy 1907. Dir unknown. Società Anonima Cines.
Tinted and hand-coloured.

A Butterfly's Changes (La Métamorphose du papillon)
France 1904. Dir Gaston Velle, Pathé Frères.
Hand-coloured.

The Pillar of Fire (La Danse du feu)
France 1899. Dir Georges Méliès, Star Films.
Hand-coloured.

Danse du Papillon
France 1900. Dir Alice Guy-Blaché, Gaumont.
Hand-coloured.

The Red Spectre (La Spectre Rouge)
France 1907. Dir Segundo de Chomón, Pathé Frères.
Stencil-coloured.