Part of the Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers series

As respected, popular, and, for a time, as highly paid, as D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, Weber used complex storytelling and amazing technical breakthroughs to address the intricacies of social issues that are still relevant today. She also mentored other women filmmakers, such as Ida May Park and Lule Warrenton, whose work can be seen in next week’s Rediscovered Voices program.

The program includes:

• Hypocrites (1915) | 52 min | Weber courted immense controversy with this provocative exploration of sham religious piety, in which moral hypocrisy is exposed by the Naked Truth — portrayed by a nude actress.

• Suspense (1913) | 11.25 min | This one-reel thriller — about a menaced mother and child — displays Weber’s dazzling formal mastery, including film history’s first split-screen.

• Scandal (1916) | 36 min | Weber envisions gossip as a literal beast destroying the life of a stenographer accused of having an affair with her boss.