Started in 2011, the Leader Ladies Project presents a collection of “China Girls” (or “Leader Ladies,” as we’ve heard at least one person call them) – the test images of (most often) women that sometimes appear in the countdown that begins every reel of motion picture film meant for exhibition, often accompanied by color bars and gray patches. Their images were used by film lab workers setting color timing or black and white density – and they were sometimes film lab workers themselves. These images are a mix from-the-rewind-bench snapshots we’ve taken ourselves, as well as scans and photos from archivists, projectionists, and film collectors from around the world. Normally not visible to anyone outside a fairly small subset of the film industry, this is the largest publicly viewable collection in the country.
Leader Ladies Project at the Chicago Film Society.
