The inspiring story of Alice Guy, the first female movie director in cinema history
In 1895, the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph. Less than a year later, 23-year-old Alice Guy, the first female filmmaker in cinema history, made The Cabbage Fairy, a 60-second movie, for Léon Gaumont, going on to direct over 300 films before 1922. Her life is a shadow history of early cinema, the chronicle of an art form coming into its own. A free and independent woman, rubbing shoulders with luminaries such as Georges Méliès and the Lumières, she was the first to define the professions of screenwriter and producer. She directed the first feminist satire, then the first sword-and-sandal epic, before crossing the Atlantic in 1907 to become the first woman to found her own production company in New Jersey. Alice Guy died in 1969, excluded from the annals of film history. In 2011, Martin Scorsese honoured this cinematic visionary, “forgotten by the industry she had helped create”, describing her as “a filmmaker of rare sensitivity, with a remarkable poetic eye and an extraordinary feel for locations”. The same can be said of Catel & Bocquet’s luminous account of her life.
Alice Guy: First Lady of Film is written by José-Louis Bocquet with art by Catel Muller, and translated by Edward Gauvin. It comes to the UK in July and US in August from SelfMadeHero.
The late great Roger Ebert, once said that movies are “empathy machines”, exposing the world to itself. These moving masterpieces on celluloid, elevate the human experience and even if it is just for a moment, makes the viewer empathize with people who are in worse situations than us. It also makes the viewer fantasize of how good life can be as well, as we watch how the wealthy savor life. One example of how this medium made the audience empathize with its subject, is Lynn Whitfield’s portrayal of Josephine Baker.