Make More Noise - Suffragettes in Silent Film

Music composed and performed by Lillian Henley

'You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself obtrusive then anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under...'.

Bad behaviour, noise, clamour and violence are not traits normally associated with British women - but for the first 15 years of the twentieth, fearless females fought with the authorities, and society at large, to make themselves heard. At the same time, cinema was becoming established as a dominant art form, and the suffragettes made it their business to get in front of the cameras.

Make More Noise! combines documentary footage of the suffragettes' public activities with comedy films of the period, which joyously pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable behaviour. These gloriously anarchic pre-war comedies are full of bright sparks like the Tilly girls (starring Alma Taylor and Chrissie White) who gleefully disobey society's strictures. Women are seen acting like men, dressing in men's trousers and even leaving the men at home minding the babies. The films reveal how girls and women were already acting differently, had higher aspirations and expected more freedom than their grandmothers could have imagined, going against conventional wisdom that female emancipation was a result of war-time changes.

• Suffragette Demonstration in London (1910, 3 mins): newsreel of an early suffragette mass march
• Tilly the Tomboy Visits the Poor (1910, 6 mins): The Tilly girls star in this mischievous comedy
• London Factory Girls on Strike in Camden Town (1911, 27 secs): newsreel footage of the strikers
• Suffragette Pageant in London (1911, 1 min): footage of the Women's Coronation Procession
• London Church Completely Destroyed by Fire (1913, 1 min): newsreel of an arson attack
• St Leonards Outrage (1913, 1 min): footage of an arson attack on a MP's home
• Suffragette Derby of 1913 (1913, 5 mins): Gaumont's footage of the 1913 Derby
• Law Abiding Suffragists in Hyde Park (1913, 1 min): a mass NUWSS meeting
• Suffragettes Again (1913, 1 min): newsreel of an arson attack in Plymouth
• Trafalgar Square Meeting (1916, 1 min): Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Dacre Fox address the crowd
• Labour's First Woman MP (1922, 14 secs): short clip of Susan Lawrence
• Lady Astor (Conservative) in Again for Plymouth (1923, 13 secs): the first female MP celebrates another win
• Illustrated booklet with essays by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Bryony Dixon and Lillian Henley, film notes and credits

UK | 1899 - 1917 | black and white | silent with music | English intertitles | 72 minutes | DVD9 | original aspect ratio 1.33:1 | Dolby Digital 5.1 (448kbps) and 2.0 (192kbps) Cert E | Region 0