Mothers of Men1917

Made two years before the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote, this melodrama depicts a future in which a woman holds high political office. Dorothy Davenport Reid plays an ardent suffragist who ascends from judge to governor and manages, despite the odds, to maintain her integrity. Filmed entirely in Santa Cruz and the Bay Area, the film is early evidence of Northern California's progressive roots. "Its timeliness will strike home," proclaimed the Motion Picture News in 1917. The restoration is a collaboration between the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the Library of Congress, the British Film Institute and film archivist James Mockoski.