The first known female film director in history: Who is Alice Guy Blaché?

Alice Guy Blaché, the first known female film director in history and the first to make a fiction film, was born in Paris on July 1, 1873. Alice, the youngest of four children of a Parisian bookseller, is educated in Paris. She lost her father at a young age and started working as a secretary at an early age.

In 1897, while her mother was working at a charity organization, she met Léon Gaumont, who was dealing with the sale of film equipment, and became his secretary. When the company switches from producing cameras to film production, Alice finds the opportunity to become involved with cinema.

Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché (1 July 1873 – 24 March 1968) was a French pioneer film director. She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. She experimented with Gaumont's Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.

She produced Gaurmont films between 1897 and 1906. During this period, she made nearly a hundred films, including La Fée aux Choux (1900), Lumière's Arroseur Arrosé (1897), and La Vie du Christ (1898-99).

In 1906, she met cameraman Herbert Blaché, they got married, and they went to New York together due to his appointment. In 1910, Alice had a daughter. After giving birth, Alice, who wanted to continue making films in freer and independent conditions, founded her own production company in the USA. Solax, a small but creative firm, remains in operation for three years. Alice and Guy Blancé also make many films, including A Child's Sacrifice (1910) and Dick Whittington and his Cat (1913). When her company was closed during the economic crisis, she founded Blaché Features in 1913.

In 1922, she left Herbert Blaché and returned to France with her daughter, but the film industry did not open its doors to her. Alice begins writing children's books. We still don't know exactly how she lived her life until the French government awarded her the Legion d'Honneur in 1953.

Returning to the USA in 1964, Alice Guy started living with one of her daughters. Afterwards, she stays in a nursing home in New Jersey. She passed away there at the age of 95...

The death of the filmmaker who brought color and sound to the black-and-white years of the film industry will also be silent. Not a single newspaper advertisement or news is published afterwards. Like many women who have "proven" themselves in their field, Alice is ignored and forgotten. However, according to official records, Alice has made nearly 350 films throughout her life, both as a director and a producer, but she still has to "prove" the effort she has given to the traditionally male-dominated cinema industry.

As early as 1906, she shot La Fée Printemps, one of cinema's first color films. Between 1906 and 1907, she made around 100 sound short films made with chronophones. But in the traditionally male-dominated sources of the cinema industry, Alice is either deemed to never exist or is glossed over in footnotes. In her work titled The Dictionary of Film Makers, published in 1972, Georges Sadoul writes the following about Alice:

“Guy Blaché, Alice -... was originally Leon Gaumont's secretary. While working for Gaumont, which made film equipment for customers, Blaché was making short films for presentation purposes. She shot her first film, Fee Aux Choux, in 1896, months before Melies' film. Thus, she became the first female film director in history.”

However, in the same book, Melies is shown as the "father" of narrative-fictional cinema. However, Alice's film, La Fée Aux Choux, which was shot before Melies and tells a French fable, is the first fictional film in the history of cinema. Of course, the issue is much more than being the first, but let's correct it anyway: Alice Guy Blaché is the first director to make a fictional film, and Melies is the first male director to make a fictional film.

The films of Alice Guy Blaché, who was not afraid of innovation and experimentation and who made films in various genres, from fantasy to romantic films, took part in all women's film festivals after the seventies.

In Women Who Made the Movies, her daughter Simone Blaché describes Alice as follows: “She was a 19th-century person in many ways. She believed in family structure. But she also had strong feminist views. "Everything she saw and heard about feminism excited her."

Her works and life give us excitement, courage, and honor.