Home » Interviews » Edgar Recipient Christina Lane Documents Forgotten Women of the Film Industry

Edgar Recipient Christina Lane Documents Forgotten Women of the Film Industry

Introduction to Christina Lane. 1:17 min. Interview: Beverly R. Muzii. Post-Production: Beverly R. Muzii. Music: Beverly R. Muzii. Recorded via Zoom 3/20/2024.

DR. CHRISTINA LANE is an Edgar® Award-winning author, and educator. Her book, “Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, The Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock” is a biography of Joan Harrison who started as Alfred Hitchcock’s secretary and soon became one of his closest collaborators, earning an Oscar nomination for his first American film, “Rebecca,” and critically shaping his brand as the “Master of Suspense.” Joan Harrison went on to become an influential producer of film noir in Hollywood and a powerhouse producer of five television series in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to winning the Edgar® and Agatha Awards, “Phantom Lady” has been nominated for an Anthony Award (in honor of author Anthony Boucher), and was named by Library Journal as one of the Best Books of 2020.

Dr.Lane has also written the books “Feminist Hollywood: From Born in Flames to Point Break” and “Magnolia,” which is the first full-length study of the Paul Thomas Anderson film. Her work has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Cinema Journal, the Quarterly Review of Film and Television, Cine-Files, Alphaville, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Journal of Popular Film and TV. She has contributed essays to various edited collections, including “The Routledge Handbook of Digital Humanities and Remix Studies;” “Hollywood Transgressor: The Films of Kathryn Bigelow;” “Contemporary American Independent Film;” “Feminism Goes to the Movies” and “Hitchcock and Adaptation.”

Dr. Lane served as President of the University Film and Video Association from 2020 to 2022 and on the Steering Committee of Women and Film History International from 2019 to 2022. She has provided commentary to such outlets as Air Mail, CrimeReads, and the Daily Mail and appeared as a featured guest speaker at the Film Forum, Queens Library, and on NPR and Turner Classic Movies.

Lane is a professor of film studies in the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies.

ArtSpeak previously published a video conversation with director Maria Giese, who co-stars with Meryl Streep, Geena Davis, Reese Witherspoon, and Natalie Portman in the documentary film “This Changes Everything” — which addresses the suppression of women in the film industry.

The videos below were recorded via Zoom, are organized by Success Factor, and run between 30 seconds and 5 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES: 1:30 min.

Where did you grow up, and what was your first awareness of art of any discipline?

VALUES FIRST-RATE EDUCATION: 3:08 min

Where did you go to school and what did you learn that still informs you today?

EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES: 3:47 min.

What was the evolution of your career following school?

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 4:18 min.

Who are some of your role models and influencers?

CRITICAL THINKING: 3:41 min.

What inspired your interest in cinema?

CRITICAL THINKING: 5:06 min.

Throughout history, film has been a platform for expressing social change. What differences do you observe between films made during the 1930-50s and those made in more recent years? What are the similarities between mid-century Hollywood and Hollywood today?

UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART: 3:23 min.