Jill Craigie and the BBC: Postwar television, feminist histories and modern femininities

Abstract

Using the BBC Written Archives Centre’s records, this working paper explores a documentary about the suffragettes written by feminist, socialist filmmaker Jill Craigie for the BBC in 1949 – illuminating her previously unconsidered efforts to bring the women’s movement to life in an innovative, modern way on the small screen. Although Craigie later withdrew from this project, this paper explores how archival traces of Craigie’s television work offer new insight into her postwar career as a filmmaker, writer and onscreen personality, and shine new light on her place in a feminist genealogy concerned with the historical fight for women’s rights.