Alice Guy Blache Cinema Pioneer, Joan Simon, Jane Gaines, Alison McMahan, Charles Musser, Joan Simon, Kim Tomadjoglou, Alan Williams

This book celebrates the achievements of Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968), the first woman motion picture director and producer. From 1896 to 1907, Guy Blache created films for Gaumont in Paris. In 1907, she moved to the United States and established her own film company, Solax, first located in Flushing, Queens, and then in Fort Lee, New Jersey. From 1914 to 1920, Guy Blache was an independent director for a number of film companies. Despite her immensely productive and creative career, Guy Blache's indispensable contribution to film history has been overlooked. She entered the world of film making at its nascent stage, when films were seen primarily as a medium in the service of science or as an adjunct to selling cameras. Working with Gaumont cameramen and cameras and the new technical advances for the projection of film, she became one of the film pioneers ushering in the new era of motion pictures as a narrative form. Written by cinema history experts and curators, this handsome volume brings to light a critical new mass of Guy Blache's film oeuvre in an effort to restore her to her rightful place in film history.

Joan Simon is Curator-at-Large for the Whitney Museum of American Art.