Director

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  Alice GUY-BLACHÉAlice GUY-BLACHÉ

  "Born in 1873 in Paris, France, Alice GUY-BLACHÉ was a pioneer of both French and American film. She first started out as the secretary to Léon GAUMONT, unknowingly stepping into the vortex from which cinema would be born. She, who was at the Lumière Brothers' first screening in 1895, realized that movies could do more than document workers leaving a factory. She asked her boss, GAUMONT, for permission to do something better: to tell a story. Despite her youth and inexperience, she wrote her own script and succeeded in making one of the first narrative films, The Cabbage Fairy, in 1896, which preceded the story films of Georges MÉLIÈS. She worked as head of film production for the Gaumont Film Company in Paris until 1907 when she moved to the United States. Three years later, she created her own company, Solax, and set up a studio in 1912, becoming the first woman to own and run a studio plant. Her innovative filmmaking career in France (1896-1907) and the United States (1910-1920), in which she employed color tinting, 'trick' photography, interracial casting, and synchronized sound, is comprised of more than a thousand films which she wrote, produced, or directed. Despite the depth of her work, her contribution in shaping early cinematic history has been overlooked, and she is often revered as a lost great visionary of cinema.