Lulu and Beyond with Pamela Hutchinson

Film historian Pamela Hutchinson talks about the life and legacy of 1920s star Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks was born in Kansas, and made her name as first, one of the most beautiful dancers on Broadway, and then as one of the most rebellious starlets in silent-era Hollywood.

Known for her insouciant face, hot temper and distinctive flapper haircut, her lasting fame was secured by a trio of art films she made in Europe after turning her back on Los Angeles. The first made her name - the German silent Pandora's Box, in which she plays Lulu, a dangerous Weimar femme fatale who brings the men and women who love her to their knees.

After seeing all there was to see in the movie industry on both sides of the Atlantic, Brooks lived to tell the tale and to be reclaimed as a true star of the early cinema. In her later life, her uniquely provocative voice shone in a series of articles that told the unpalatable truth about the movie business

About the speaker:

Pamela Hutchinson is a freelance writer, critic and film historian who contributes regularly to Sight & Sound, the Guardian, Criterion, Empire and the BBC, specialising in silent and classic cinema and women in film. She is a guest lecturer at the National Film and Television School, and a member of both Fipresci and the London Film Critics' Circle. She has written essays for several edited collections and is the author of the BFI Film Classic on Pandora's Box and the editor of 30-Second Cinema (Ivy Press). She also writes the silent cinema website Silent London.

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