Alice Guy-BlachÃ©

Alice Guy-BlachÃ© (July 1, 1873 â€" March 24, 1968) was an early French filmmaker. She was the first woman director in the motion-picture industry and is one of the first directors of fiction films.

Early life and education

In 1873, Alice Guyâ€™s mother lived in Santiago, Chile. While pregnant, Guyâ€™s mother traveled to Paris, France, where she gave birth to Alice Guy. Following her birth, Guy was raised by her grandparents until the age of four. In 1877, Guyâ€™s mother retrieved her from her grandparents and returned to Chile, where Guy met her father for the first time. In 1879, her father returned Guy to France where she was enrolled in boarding school with two of her sisters. While Guy was at boarding school, her fatherâ€™s chain of bookstores became bankrupt. This forced Guyâ€™s father to transfer her to a cheaper boarding school. After this both her father and brother died. Following her fatherâ€™s death, Guy trained as a typist and got her first job as a secretary, starting her career.

Gaumont, France

In 1894, Alice Guy was hired by LÃ©on Gaumont to work for a still-photography company as a secretary. The company soon went out of business but Gaumont bought the defunct operation's inventory and began his own company that soon became a major force in the fledgling motion-picture industry in France. Guy decided to join the new Gaumont Film Company, a decision that led to a pioneering career in filmmaking spanning more than twenty-five years and involving her directing, producing, writing and/or overseeing more than 700 films.

From 1896 to 1906, Alice Guy was Gaumont's head of production and is generally considered to be the first filmmaker to systematically develop narrative filmmaking. In 1906, she made The Life of Christ, a big budget production for the time, which included 300 extras. In addition to this, she was one of the pioneers in the use of audio recordings in conjunction with the images on screen in Gaumont's "Chronophone" system, which used a vertical-cut disc synchronized to the film. An innovator, she employed special effects, using double exposure masking techniques and even running a film backwards.

Solax, USA

In 1907 Alice Guy married Herbert BlachÃ© who was soon appointed the production manager for Gaumont's operations in the United States. After working with her husband for Gaumont in the USA, the two struck out on their own in 1910, partnering with George A. Magie in the formation of The Solax Company, the largest pre-Hollywood studio in America. With production facilities for their new company in Flushing, New York, her husband served as production manager as well as cinematographer and Alice Guy-BlachÃ© worked as the artistic director, directing many of its releases. Within two years they had become so successful that they were able to invest more than $100,000 into new and technologically advanced production facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey, when many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based there at the beginning of the 20th century. It was commented on in publications of the era that Guy-BlachÃ© placed a large sign in her studio reading "Be Natural".

Post-Solax

Alice Guy and her husband divorced several years later, and with the decline of the East Coast film industry in favour of the more hospitable and cost effective climate in Hollywood, their film partnership also ended.

Following her separation, and after Solax ceased production, Guy-BlachÃ© went to work for William Randolph Hearst's International Film Service. She returned to France in 1922 and although she never made another film, for the next 30 years she gave lectures on film and wrote novels from film scripts. She was all but forgotten for decades. But in 1953, the government of France awarded her the Legion of Honor.

Personal life

Alice Guy-BlachÃ©'s marriage meant that she had to resign from her position working with Gaumont. Looking for new beginnings, the couple immigrated to New York where Guy gave birth to her first daughter Simone in 1908. Two years after giving birth Guy became the first woman to run her own studio when she created Solax. During this time, Guy was pregnant with her second child, but it did not stop her from completing at least one to three films a week. To focus on writing and directing, in 1914 Guy made her husband the president of Solax. Shortly after taking the position Herbert BlachÃ© started his own film company. For the next few years the couple maintained a personal and business partnership, working together on many projects. The relationship between the two did not last long. In 1918 Herbert BlachÃ© left his wife and children to pursue a career in Hollywood with one of his actresses.

Following this, Guy directed her last film in 1920, during which she almost died due to the Spanish Influenza. By 1922, Blache and Guy were officially divorced, prompting Guy to auction off her film studio while claiming bankruptcy. After losing her studio, Guy returned to France in 1922 and never made a film again. Following her bankruptcy and divorce, Guy could not make a living making films.

In 1927, Guy returned to the United States in an attempt to retrieve some of her old work but was unsuccessful. In 1930, LÃ©on Gaumont published the history of his company with no mention of any production history before 1907. This upset Guy, prompting her to write a letter to Gaumont, after which he agreed to change the documents. However these changes were never published. The rest of Guy's career and life was dedicated to her children, specifically her eldest daughter Simone, with whom she spent much of her later years.

Alice Guy-BlachÃ© never remarried and in 1964 she returned to the United States to stay with one of her daughters. On March 24, 1968 Guy died at the age of 94 while living at a nursing home in New Jersey and is interred at Maryrest Cemetery.

Legacy

Alice Guy-BlachÃ© is the first female film maker and is responsible for creating one of the first narrative films in 1896. Guyâ€™s career of 24 years of directing, writing and producing films is the longest career of any of the cinema pioneers. From 1896 to 1920, Guy directed over 1,000 films, some 350 of which survive, and 22 of which are feature-length films.

Guy was one of the first women (along with Lois Weber) to manage and own her own studio, The Solax Company.

Despite these accomplishments, she is rarely, if ever, mentioned among her peers in the history of cinema, and most professionals in the industry are completely unaware of her work. Few of her films survive in an easily viewable format (primarily those involving Charlie Chaplin), although preservation and recovery efforts are ongoing by the documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-BlachÃ©.

In 2004, the only existing historic marker dedicated to Alice Guy-BlachÃ© in the USA was unveiled on the location of her Solax Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey by the Fort Lee Film Commission.

In 2008, the Fort Lee Film Commission of Fort Lee, New Jersey, the home to Solax Studio, created the annual "Alice" Award dedicated to Alice Guy-BlachÃ©. Winners in the past include Academy Award winning actress and director Lee Grant (2008), actress Parker Posey (2010), Garden State Film Festival Executive Director Diane Raver (2011), NJ Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (2012) and Susan MacLaury, Executive Producer of the 2013 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short, Inocente (2013).

In 2012, for the centennial of the building and opening of Alice Guy-BlachÃ©'s Solax Studio in Fort Lee, NJ, the Fort Lee FIlm Commission raised funds to replace her grave marker in Maryrest Cemetery in Mahwah, NJ â€" the new marker includes the Solax studio logo and indicates her role as a cinema pioneer.

The Golden Door Film Festival's Women in Film-Alice Guy Blache Award is named in her honor.

Awards

In 1953, Guy was awarded the LÃ©gion d'honneur, the highest non-military award France offers. On March 16, 1957, she was honored in a CinÃ©matheque FranÃ§aise ceremony that went unnoticed by the press.

Filmography

Posthumous tributes

The Fort Lee Film Commission of Fort Lee, New Jersey, has worked with Alice Guy-BlachÃ© biographer Alison McMahan to create one of the only existing historic markers dedicated to the role she played as the first woman film director and studio owner. The marker is located on Lemoine Avenue adjacent to the Fort Lee High School and on the site of Solax Studio. The Fort Lee Film Commission has also planted a marker dedicated to Alice Guy-BlachÃ©'s accomplishments at her grave in Mahwah.

She was the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-BlachÃ© by director Marquise LepageÂ (fr), which received Quebec's Gemeaux Award for Best Documentary. In 2002, film scholar Alison McMahan published Alice Guy BlachÃ©: Lost Visionary of the Cinema.

In 2011, an off Broadway production of FLIGHT premiered at the Connelly Theatre, featuring a fictionalized portrayal of Alice Guy-BlachÃ© as a 1913 documentary filmmaker.

Also in 2011, the Fort Lee Film Commission successfully lobbied the Directors Guild of America to accept Alice Guy-BlachÃ© as a member.

In its second year (2012) the Golden Door Film Festival in Jersey City inaugurated the Women in Film â€" Alice Guy-BlachÃ© Award.

In 2013, documentarians Pamela Green and Jarik van Slujis ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-BlachÃ©, a documentary on BlachÃ©. The Kickstarter was successful and as of 2014, the documentary is moving forward.

In 2013, Reel Women Media is in post production with "Reel Herstory: The REAL Story of Reel Women" based on the book by Ally Acker. The film covers the significant contribution of Alice Guy-BlachÃ©.

References

Sources

Acker, Ally. Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present. New York: Continuum, 1990. Print.
Acker, Ally. Reel Women: The First Hundred Years (Two Volumes). New York: Reel Women Media, 2011. Print.
McMahan, Alison. "Alice Guy Blache The Research & Books of Alison Mcmahan." Aliceguyblache.com. Homunculus Productions.

External links

Reel Women Media

Alice Guy-BlachÃ©

Saturday, March 28, 2015