The French Director is considered a pioneer of the cinema. Now you can discover them in Germany after a long time again. For decades it was forgotten, also because men wrote the history of cinema.
This is also a result of the discussion of #MeToo and gender equity in Film: Alice Guy (1873 – 1968) can be re-discovered. Now, for example, in Bonn, the biggest German silent film festival. There are some films of the French cinema pioneer, will be shown on the big screen with Live music accompaniment in front of thousands of spectators.
“That one is occupied now in the #MeToo debate and with a greater awareness of these issues more intensively with Alice Guy, has led to a lot more movies can be attributed, in the early days of cinema, male colleagues have been attributed to”, says Stefan Drössler, Director of the Munich film Museum. Drössler curated for many years, the prestigious Festival in Bonn, and has also been shown in previous years, the films of Alice Guy in the courtyard garden of the University of Bonn.
Until 2019, some of the Director’s films run under your name
In the case of some of the presented films Drößler had not known himself, that Alice Guy once on the Director’s chair. He gives an example: “The Film ‘spring Fairy’ we are the 2019 show, was presented last year in Bonn. Since he had not been registered yet as the Alice-Guy-movie.” Now The spring Fairy “(“La Fée aux Choux was”restored”) using the latest digital techniques and running again in Bonn – this time, however, as a Film by Alice Guy.
As a Director early on top: Alice Guy shooting at
The films from the early years of cinema had not had proper Credits, as is usual today, told Drößler, only a movie title. In the early years of the seventh art films are very fast, such as on a conveyor belt, emerged. Later, you would have tried then, you are certain film-makers to assign. And, then, were almost exclusively men.
Alice Guy witnessed the pioneer days of cinema up close
With the help of digitalization, intensive Research and a different consciousness for the power of women in the early years of cinema are now assigned to but some of the movies new. Also those of Alice Guy. Considered the early pioneer of the cinema. Your biography is actually has long been well known: in 1873, in the East of Paris, was born, she was early 20’s Secretary in the case of a camera – and-photography-manufactory, and met with the then-new Medium of Film.
The cinema was in the pioneer days, certainly for a woman: Alice Guy with an umbrella
She attended the first projections of the cinema pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière, in Paris, and moved on to another employer: The was now called “L. Gaumont” and had to produce movies. Alice Guy was there stage. And she was apparently successful. Some film historians to write even the Director of the first movie. However, this is controversial. In the following years, Guy was head of production at Gaumont and established with the then customary short genre films. They staged adventure strips, westerns, comedies. In 1906, she has realized large-scale production of “La Vie du Christ” with hundreds of extras.
Alice Guy was self-aware for the rights of women in Film
Guy was early interested in all aspects of film-making: “It was a long time been for me a source of wonder that not many more women have taken of the wonderful opportunity offered them the art of film making as a film Director your way to fame and fortune,” wrote Alice Guy later in an article for the American Journal, “Moving Picture World”. Since you worked in the United States.
Mood Ville atmosphere at the Bonn silent film days
Guy experimented early on with sound and colour: “Of all the arts there is probably none in which they (the women, editor’s note.d.Red.) such a great use of talent can make you a lot more to own than a man, and the perfection of this art, so necessary,” the self-aware Protocol.
Also, the “technical side” was for the Guy a matter of course
And not only that. In particular, dealing with the technical processes of the early film production closely: “There is nothing in connection with the staging of a film, what could make a woman just as easily as a man, and there is no reason why you could not any technical side of this art are completely overcome.” Film technique was a “suitable field for female activity,” she was convinced. Bold words in 1914!
Stefan Drössler is curator of the Bonn silent film festival
Guy realized several hundred films as Director and producer. In 1907, she married cameraman Herbert Blaché, went with him to America: As Alice Guy-Blaché, she was also in the movie history. In 1910, the French founded his own production company, the “Solax”. Alice Guy was regarded for decades as the only woman at the top of the American film studios.
Guy fell into oblivion, even because of the male journalistic dominance
Back to the beginning of the 1920s, after several failures from the film business, got divorced and took her two children back to France. There, the Name Alice Guy disappeared for many years from the awareness of film history. “The classic Cinephilie is very marked men,” says Stefan Drössler, and refers to the fact that over 90 percent of the film historians were men: “of Course, this film has adhered to history women.”
Also in “primal male” Western Genre Alice Guy (l.) gave the Director instructions
For him, it was “absolutely not surprising, as for decades, the Creating of the film so little research has been creating, while it has done other very well.” It was so Drößler, “disproportionately, if you look at women.”
In the case of a French woman’s film festival in the 1970s, the slow began re-discovery of the Alice Guy. You are not more experienced. Alice Guy died in 1968 at the age of 95 years. Only after her death, her memoirs were published. In the following years, various documentary went inside in search of clues, and at the close of the work of French film pioneer. Festivals organised Retrospectives.
Today, you can see a Alice-Guy-style in some of their movies
You were allowed to have a private style, a cinematic legacy. Today this is firmly rooted in film history – though still little known: “Now that you know more about Alice Guy, you will find of course certain motifs in their films,” says Drößler. It leads to a Film like “spring Fairy” is newly discovered as an Alice-Guy-movie.
Women and turret: scene from “Two Little Rangers”
And there are other examples, which are to see in Bonn in front of a large backdrop: If in the early silent westerns (“Two little Rangers”/”Two Little Rangers”) all of a sudden women with weapons running around and hunting at movie villains do when a pregnant woman running through a city, a huge cravings developed, and the other steals food from her plate (“Madame in distress”/”Madame a des Envies”), will be clear that “female subjects” were already early in the history of film.
Reversing the gender roles on the screen
Particularly original was the of Alice Guy in “emancipation of women”/”Les Résultats du Féminisme” in the scene. Stefan Drössler: “The Film shows scenes in which the gender roles are just reversed: We see men and women with the ‘typical’ behaviour being attributed to the other gender always.”
Reversed roles in the “emancipation of women”
There is domestic scenes, in which men Ironing and washing, to take care of the children. The women enter, however, as “the Pasha,” the scene, smoke cigars, read the newspaper, and you can use. Also on the road this exchanged continued roles: women seduce men, men run away scared, when women approach.
35. Edition of the silent film festival in Bonn will take place from 15. – 25. August, in September, some of the films will be shown, also of Alice Guy, the Munich film Museum.