Courtesy of Women Make Movies
Screening & Live Event
The Phantom of the Operator with Caroline Martel in person
Opening event for Industry/Cinema: An Installation by Caroline Martel
Reception at 6:00 p.m.
Screening at 7:30 p.m.
Dir. Caroline Martel. 2004, 66 mins. This wry and delightful found-footage film reveals a little-known chapter in labor history: the story of female telephone operators’ central place in the development of global communications. With an eye for the quirky and humorous, Martel assembles a dazzling array of clips—more than one hundred remarkable, rarely seen industrial, advertising, and scientific management films produced in North America between 1903 and 1989 by Bell and Western Electric—and transforms them into a dreamlike montage documentary.
Free with Museum admission.
