28 important works were previously included in the AFI Catalog because they are short films (Figure 3) (Gaines 2001: 95). Lois Weber, who became the highest paid director in Hollywood, male or female, wrote and directed over 40 features, but she got her start in short films, of which she directed nearly 100 (Stamp 2015). Another example is director Ida May Park, who helmed fourteen feature films but wrote over twenty shorts that were not recorded in the database. The list of women and BIPOC storytellers during the silent era is long, though they worked mostly behind the camera, and in the short film format, especially as featurelength films became increasingly difficult to finance with higher production costs, which only increased during the advent of sound technology. Figure 2: Film still, Alice Guy Blaché (dir.), A FOOL AND HIS MONEY, 1912, USA. Figure 3: William D. Foster, circa 1910s, USA, n.d. Data for movie performers also demonstrates the challenges in documenting the true scope of the actor’s influence when short films are omitted. The list includes early Hollywood’s biggest star, Mary Pickford, who performed in over 80 shorts between 1911 and 1913, which were not included in the AFI Catalog until now. Likewise, Bert Williams, the first Black vaudeville celebrity, whose recordings sold millions, also wrote, directed, and starred in two 1916 short comedies, but neither were in the AFI Catalog before the Behind the Veil project. Also, Mabel Normand acted in over 220 films, but most of them were previously missing from the AFI Catalog (Figure 4). And the Japanese actor Tsuru Aoki made twenty short films between 1913 and 1915, mostly with Asian themes, and her titles are now included in the dataset. Other noteworthy actors include Sessue Hayakawa, Myrtle Gonzalez, Red Wing and countless others who got their start in short films, but whose credits were extensively truncated in the AFI Catalog due to the exclusion of shorts (Figure 5).
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