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Alice Guy-Blaché attended one of the first "surprise" film screenings from the Lumière brothers back in 1895, she started making films the next year for Léon Gaumont, was named Head of Production where she was one of the first, if not the first to explore with fictional storytelling as well as many other innovative film techniques... and still, most people – from regular audiences and cinephiles to actual filmmakers and scholars – don't know who she is. The fact that she was a woman either makes that fact more surprising, or sadly, more understandable.
Be Natural, from Pamela B. Green tries to correct that by chronicling Guy-Blaché's career, from 1895 to her death, and beyond. One of the things the documentary highlights is why so many people had/have never heard of her. The truth is that most of Guy-Blaché's work and contributions to film ended up being either dismissed, erased, or attributed to others. Maybe it was just a thing of time and place, but maybe it was ego or the nature of a male-driven society. Fortunately, Green does a great job of bringing it to the surface.
The documentary uses a very accessible visual style to lead you through all the years and events that led to how things ended up. It makes sense that Green's main job is as a title designer because, aside from the relevance of the story, the visuals were one of the main things that caught my eye as I watched this. She uses a very easy-to-follow and streamlined format to show you a chronological course of events.
The choice of interviewees is also very good, as it goes from film scholars and archivists to filmmakers like Agnès Varda, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Bogdanovich to Peter Farrelly, Ava DuVernay, and Patty Jenkins. The narration from Jodie Foster is also very effective and well handled. This is all paired with actual interviews with Guy-Blaché done in the 1960s. All of that made for a very engaging documentary that had me captivated from the very beginning.
It is hard to be an active filmmaker, let alone a successful one. Just by looking at the ratio of male vs. female directors, you can get the notion that it's even harder to be a female director; the cards are not stacked equally. But to be a female filmmaker at the dawn of the medium and create a path, instead of following others, well, that's a hell of a feat.
Grade:
BE NATURAL
THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ
(2018, Green)
Freebie
THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ
(2018, Green)
Freebie
"How does one have the sense of *cinema*, when there was no *cinema*?"
Alice Guy-Blaché attended one of the first "surprise" film screenings from the Lumière brothers back in 1895, she started making films the next year for Léon Gaumont, was named Head of Production where she was one of the first, if not the first to explore with fictional storytelling as well as many other innovative film techniques... and still, most people – from regular audiences and cinephiles to actual filmmakers and scholars – don't know who she is. The fact that she was a woman either makes that fact more surprising, or sadly, more understandable.
Be Natural, from Pamela B. Green tries to correct that by chronicling Guy-Blaché's career, from 1895 to her death, and beyond. One of the things the documentary highlights is why so many people had/have never heard of her. The truth is that most of Guy-Blaché's work and contributions to film ended up being either dismissed, erased, or attributed to others. Maybe it was just a thing of time and place, but maybe it was ego or the nature of a male-driven society. Fortunately, Green does a great job of bringing it to the surface.
The documentary uses a very accessible visual style to lead you through all the years and events that led to how things ended up. It makes sense that Green's main job is as a title designer because, aside from the relevance of the story, the visuals were one of the main things that caught my eye as I watched this. She uses a very easy-to-follow and streamlined format to show you a chronological course of events.
The choice of interviewees is also very good, as it goes from film scholars and archivists to filmmakers like Agnès Varda, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Bogdanovich to Peter Farrelly, Ava DuVernay, and Patty Jenkins. The narration from Jodie Foster is also very effective and well handled. This is all paired with actual interviews with Guy-Blaché done in the 1960s. All of that made for a very engaging documentary that had me captivated from the very beginning.
It is hard to be an active filmmaker, let alone a successful one. Just by looking at the ratio of male vs. female directors, you can get the notion that it's even harder to be a female director; the cards are not stacked equally. But to be a female filmmaker at the dawn of the medium and create a path, instead of following others, well, that's a hell of a feat.
Grade: