I've seen 102 of the world's first female filmmaker's, Alice Guy (Blaché), films now according to my Letterboxd logs, which even granted that these internet databases are more incomplete and error-prone the further back in film history one goes, that number is probably fairly close. Besides listing a few of what I consider the most interesting of them, I'll also reference a few other sources I found helpful in my studies of the historically-important filmmaking figure. Basically, a syllabus, I suppose.
The book to guide one through Guy's career is Allison McMahan's Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema. On the web, the Women Film Pioneers Project is a valuable resource. Here is Guy's page written by, of course,…
I've seen 102 of the world's first female filmmaker's, Alice Guy (Blaché), films now according to my Letterboxd logs, which even granted that these internet databases are more incomplete and error-prone the further back in film history one goes, that number is probably fairly close. Besides listing a few of what I consider the most interesting of them, I'll also reference a few other sources I found helpful in my studies of the historically-important filmmaking figure. Basically, a syllabus, I suppose.
The book to guide one through Guy's career is Allison McMahan's Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema. On the web, the Women Film Pioneers Project is a valuable resource. Here is Guy's page written by, of course, McMahan. Most of the films I saw via three home-video collections distributed by Kino (Lorber)--the first volume of Gaumont Treasures 1897-1913, Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, and Alice Guy Blaché Vol. 2: The Solax Years--and one from Flicker Alley--Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology. I'm sure most, if not all, of these films have since been ripped to YouTube, but I'm not going to link to those videos unless they're directly from the source, such as EYE Filmmuseum archive, which posts some of its holdings on their channel.
For more visual learners, you're in luck, as there've always been interesting non-fiction films about Guy. From the very beginning, that is, as a reflexive Kinora reel, c. 1895, of Guy holding or demonstrating a Kinora device (a peephole viewer for films invented by Lumière and like a Mutoscope or a less-bulky Kinetoscope). Here is my review for it.
Then, there's the 1905 film of her directing a Phonoscène, an early synchronized-sound film system, for Gaumont. Here is my review for it. Of modern documentaries, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018) is the best. My review here.
Also, given this is a list of silent films, it should be recalled that there are more films that are hidden in archives and even more that are long since lost. I'll just mention two or three from the three distinct phases in Guy's career that are especially lamentable loses: First, and maybe not a film that ever existed at all or maybe (but probably not) does exist now, is the so-called "The Cabbage-Patch Fairy" (c.1896) from Guy's beginnings at Gaumont in France. What the internet (not a reliable source) says is this film is what most film historians and professional and responsible distributors (not YouTube) calls the c.1900 The Cabbage-Patch Fairy. See my reviews of the two titles for more on this controversy (here and here). Second, is her Solax one-reeler In the Year 2000 (1912), which is just an enticing title, but also a remake of Guy's interesting Gaumont short, The Consequences of Feminism (1906). Third, to represent Guy's little-seen and mostly-lost feature-length films of the 1910s to 1920, as she became a director-for-hire after owning her own studio, Solax, is The Lure (1914), a once-controversial (and thus a box-office hit) white-slavery flick that is reported to have been important in her career.
And, without further ado--except to say, check the notes and my reviews of the films for more information--here's a list in chronological order (ranking was too arbitrary) of a few of Guy's most outstanding examples of filmmaking....
