Daisy Sylvan attrice, regista e imprenditrice

The essay offers an introduction to the Women Film Pioneers Project, a collaborative research launched about the end of last century and now involving contributions by several dozens of scholars across the world. Three key methodological issues are examined: periodization and the choice to focus on silent cinema, the adoption of a transnational approach, and the project’s orientation toward a concept of social history. The essay offers a personal and professional profile of an Italian woman film pioneer, known by her stage name as Daisy Sylvan. Until recently, very little biographical information was known about her. We only had facts regarding her filmography, which consists of only two feature films (Sovrana and Bolscevismo??, both 1920) that are now lost. As in the case of many other foreign women filmmakers of this period, her story reflects a general failure of female initiatives following the end of WWI.