Alice Guy-Blaché

Known for DirectingBorn 1873-07-01Died 1968-03-24Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, France

Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) is generally considered to be the world's first female director. French-born Alice Guy entered the film business as a secretary at Gaumont-Paris in 1896. The next year Gaumont changed from manufacturing cameras to producing movies, and Guy became one of its first film directors. She impressed the company so much with the output (she averaged two two-reelers a week) and quality of her productions that by 1905 she was made the company's production director, supervising the company's other directors. In 1907 she married Herbert Blaché, an Englishman who ran the company's British and German offices. The pair soon went to the U.S. to set up the company's operations there. In 1910 she set up her own production company in New York and built a studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. After a period of critical and financial success, her company's fortunes declined and she eventually shut down the studio. Although she secured work directing films for several major Hollywood studios, she returned to France in 1922 after her divorce from Blache. She was never able to secure any directorial jobs there, and never made a film again. In 1964 she returned to the U.S. and lived in Mahwah, New Jersey - not far from where her original studios were - with her daughters, where she died in 1968.Read more

Movies & web series

Gaumont Treasures 1897-1913

In the Year 2000

Fra Diavolo

A Terrible Lesson

Dublin Dan

Child of the Tenements

The Reformation of Mary

Treasures on the Wing

The Woman Behind the Man

The Violin Maker of Nuremberg

Les malabares: Les acrobats

Cinépanorama

When You and I Were Young

Beasts of the Jungle

Kelly from the Emerald Isle

Hearts Unknown

Alice Guy, the First Female Filmmaker

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché

The Women Who Run Hollywood

The Vampire

The Roads That Lead Home

A Comedy of Errors

The Face at the Window

Mignon

Hubby Does the Washing

Blighted Lives

The Love of the Flag

The Crime on Temple Street

The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché

Tarnished Reputations

A Severe Test

Playing Trumps

His Double

God Disposes

Mrs. Cranston's Jewels

The Wooing of Alice

The Equine Spy

His Mother's Hymn

From the Valley of Shadows

Mireille

Greater Love Hath No Man

The Adventurer

Falling Leaves

Canned Harmony

A Fool and His Money

The Detective's Dog

Alice Guy Films a 'Phonoscène' in the Studio at Buttes-Chaumont, Paris

The Consequences of Feminism