By Ellen M. Spindler, Bowne House Collection Volunteer

From 1896 to 1906 Alice Guy-Blaché was the first and only woman film director in the world. In 1911, the Moving Picture News wrote that she was a “fine example of what a woman can do if given a square chance in life.” [1]

Born in Paris in 1873, she initially worked as a secretary for Leon Gaumont (who established the first and oldest film company in the world) but eventually rose to head of film production at his company after being allowed to film short theatricals. She was one of the first to use film to tell a narrative story, rather than merely photographing moving objects. [2] As Guy-Blaché wrote about her entrance into moviemaking, “My youth, my inexperience, my sex, all conspired against me.” [3]

She and her husband eventually moved to Flushing where she directed and produced short films at Gaumont’s Chronophone studio at Congress Avenue and Park Place (now 137th Street and 34rd Avenue), some of the almost 1,000 silent films in her career. [4] While there she experimented with Gaumont’s sync-sound system (synchronizing film image with sound recorded on a wax cylinder), and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects, as well as shooting at real locations.

In 1910 Guy-Blaché decided to take advantage of the underused Flushing plant to make her own silent films here after starting a company named Solax. [5] By 1911, Solax was making enough money that Guy-Blaché was able to build a new studio for it in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1912 she made the comedy A Fool and His Money, probably the first to have an all-African American cast. [6] In a newspaper interview with the New-York Tribune in 1912, she asserted her independence stating, “we’re today living in woman’s era and business is no more man’s exclusive sphere.” [7]

1. “Overlooked No More: Alice Guy-Blaché, the World’s First Female Filmmaker,“ New York Times, September 6, 2019, Updated September 9, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/obituaries/alice-guy-blache-overlooked.html

2. Paranick, Amber, “Alice Guy-Blaché: Cinema’s First Woman Director in Newspapers,” Library of Congress Blogs, January 26, 2022. https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2022/01/alice-guy-blache/

3. Paranick.

4. “On the Trail of Alice Guy-Blaché in Flushing, “October 02, 2020. https://milestonefilms.com/blogs/news/on-the-trail-of-alice-guy-blache-in-flushing-by-joe-kennedy

5. “Alice Guy-Blaché,” Encyclopedia Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Guy-Blache

6. “Alice Guy-Blaché” -AFI Catalog Spotlight, August 1, 2022. https://www.afi.com/news/alice-guy-blache-afi-catalog-spotlight/

7. “How a Woman Makes A Fortune Out of Movies,” New York Tribune, November 24, 1912.