Extraordinary Women: The Pioneering Filmmaker

More than a decade ago, filmmaker Pamela Green saw a documentary about early women filmmakers and was shocked that she had never heard of one of them -- Alice Guy-Blaché, the first woman director and one of the first to write and direct a narrative moving picture. .

That set Green on a years-long odyssey to make Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, a biography that plays like a detective drama as Green tracks down descendants of both Guy-Blaché and her colleagues, uncovers documents and locates examples of her work that survives.

Be Natural, directed by Green and narrated by Jodie Foster, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018.

Joining us for this screening is U of T prof and early cinema expert Charlie Keil, who will take part in a post-screening discussion and Q&A. (Charlie is an engaging lecturer who consistently earns an "awesome" rating from his students!) A specialist in early cinema, Charlie has concentrated on the period he has labelled "transitional," the years between 1907 and 1913 when significant changes occurred to industrial structure, production, distribution, and exhibition practices, and film form. Those played a big role in ending Guy-Blaché's extraordinary run.

Tickets are by a suggested donation of $16.

It all began for Guy-Blaché, when she landed a job as secretary in the 1890s at Gaumont, a French company that made camera equipment. In 1895, she saw the Lumière brothers' demonstration of their new film technology, and came up with the idea of telling stories with the new medium. Her first picture: The Fairy of the Cabbages or The Birth of Children, a whimsical bit of folklore about where children came from.

Over her working career, she wrote, produced or directed 1,000 films, including 150 with synchronized sound during the client era. Here work includes comedies, western and dramas, as well as films with ground-breaking subject matter such as child abuse, immigration, Planned parenthood and female empowerment. She also etched a place in history by making the earliest known surviving narrative film with an all-Black cast films. One of her notable productions was the 1906 big-budget The Life of Christ, with over 300 extras. (The photo above shows Guy-Blaché during its filming.)

After a move to the U.S. with her husband, who was to operate Gaumont's American division, she founded her own production facility. At the studio she built in Fort Lee, New Jersey, she had a large sign "Be natural," her directive to actors working on her projects.

Watch the trailer for Be Natural below.

Host or Publisher Back Lane Studios