Alice Guy-Blaché

Who, apart from moviegoers, knows Alice Guy (1873-1968) today? However, she was the first woman behind the camera and the first female director and producer of fiction films in history.

The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.

The first talkie was directed by Alice Guy, the first color film was produced by Lois Weber, who directed more than 300 films over 10 years. Frances Marion wrote screenplays for the Hollywood Star Mary Pickford and won two Oscars, Dorothy Arzner was the most powerful film director in Hollywood. And what do all of them have in common? They are all women and they have all been forgotten. Incredibly, it also took until 2010 for the first woman, Kathryn Bigelow, to win the Oscar for Best Director. Even if underrepresented women have always played a big part in Hollywood and it is this part of the film history left untold that this documentary sets out to uncover.

A biodoc about the first female filmmaker and her relative disappearance from the history of cinema after directing, producing, and writing more than 700 films.

The good people of the Solax community realize that they have cause to make merry before the New Year because the Almighty has guided their breadwinning footsteps toward the Solax Studio's happy atmosphere, bank together like the big happy family they are, to give expression to their happiness in the form of a gift to the immediate cause of their good fortune and sunshine.

Behind-the-scenes footage showing Alice Guy directing an early sound film.

"Mireille" was filmed at the end of May, 1906, by a small team including Alice Guy, Herbert Blaché, Louis Feuillade and Yvonne Mugnier-Serand at the estate of the Marquis Folco de Baroncelli-Javon in Camargue, during their visit to Nîmes to attend the Gran Corrida organized by the local press association. Ultimately, the film never saw the light of day due to technical problems. (Maurice Gianati et Laurent Mannoni (dir.), Alice Guy, Léon Gaumont et les débuts du film sonore, New Barnet, John Libbey Publishing, 2012, p. 45).

This is a compilation of some of the films that Alice Guy filmed in Spain from mid-October to the end of November, 1905 (catalogue numbers 1371 to 1384) that were individually released in early 1906.

A brief fantasy tale involving a strange fairy who can produce and deliver babies coming out of cabbages. This film is lost or never existed. Copies of it online are actually the 1900 remake.

An early Kinora demonstration film.