Alice Guy-Blaché

In Victorian-era Paris, Alice Guy, a 22-year-old stenographer/typist, began working at a camera manufacturing/photography supply company which became Gaumont et Cie, which in turn became a major force in France’s early motion picture industry. This led to her pioneering career in filmmaking that spanned 24 years in which she directed, produced, and/or wrote over a thousand films, 22 of which were feature-length.

Alice Guy, the very first woman filmmaker in the history of cinema, was born in Paris on July 1, 1873, to a Chilean father and a French mother. After the death of her father in 1891, she trained as a typist and stenographer to help support her widowed mother and four siblings.

“I’m a pusher,” says Pamela B. Green, director of the documentary: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, the first director-male or female - to introduce the concept of fictional storytelling to moving pictures, and who went on to become the first woman studio head.