Let Me Dream Again (2019), video, 1:44 min - 2019

Let Me Dream Again (2019) uses footage from two early silent films credited to director George Albert Smith: Let Me Dream Again (1900) and Mary Jane’s Mishap (1903), to create a new narrative focusing on the actress and pioneering female cinematographer Laura Bayley. In addition to her comic acting, Bayley likely contributed as an uncredited director and cinematographer in her husband Smith’s work. In Let Me Dream Again (2019), Bayley daydreams of a joyful exchange with a specter of herself, a motif mimicked in her clownish mugging to the mirror, and in her role as innovator behind and in front of the camera.