The Film That Helped Me Become A Director  

While studying screenwriting at VFS, one of our film studies teacher gave us a list of the “100 best movies of all time”. I remember scanning it, looking for female directors and protagonists, and coming up nearly empty handed. Today, over a decade later, films with women at the helm are breaking a billion at the box office and receiving regular Oscar nominations, but there is still a huge imbalance in the industry. The unfortunate truth is, the lens through which cinema sees the world is still predominately male. But it wasn't always that way.

Before DeMille, Griffith, and Wilder, there was a woman breaking barriers, innovating style, and giving audiences the big feels. At the very beginning of cinematic storytelling, starting with her short film La Fée aux choux, Alice Guy-Blaché made movie magic and shaped the industry that would later write her out of its history books.

Alice Guy began her career as an assistant for Léon Gaumont in 1894, one year before the Lumière Brothers hosted the first ever screening of a moving picture. Alice was at that screening of Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory and thought something much more interesting could be done with this new technology (more than just "demonstration films" -- which is all moving pictures were at the time). Alice saw cinema's storytelling potential and, in 1896, she made La Fée aux choux, one of the first (if not the first) narrative films of all time.

La Fée aux choux is a one minute short film, simple and sweet, about a fairy discovering babies in a cabbage patch – or, at least that's the version we have today. The original has been lost to time, unfortunately, but luckily Alice made additional versions, like the one that can currently be found YouTube.

Done with one camera angle, rich costuming, and lush production design, the film is a decidedly feminine vision, but it was the less the craft of the film and more the sheer existence of the film itself that affected me. My personal trajectory to becoming a director, you see, was not a smooth, upward trajectory. Though I spent my childhood making films (directing and editing many myself), by the time I reached film school I had forgotten what I had once capable been of. When one of my mentors suggested that I might direct my own writing some day, I shook her off. “Me, a director? No way,” I thought – literally brushing off the fact that I'd directed many films in my youth without thinking twice about it.

I wish I hadn't been so brainwashed by the lack of female representation behind the camera – I feel embarrassed even writing about it now – but what happened to me speaks undeniably to the power of images, and how they shape our world. It's easy for us to assume that cinema was predominately shaped by men, because that's what is taught in most film schools, but the truth is, women have been making movies since the very beginning.

After making La Fée aux choux, Alice Guy served as head of production for Gaumont from 1896-1906 and in 1910, she moved to New York (the “Hollywood” before Hollywood) and established her own production company. Over the course of her career, she directed over a thousand films (including big-budget epics, comedies, and what was likely the first film with an African-American cast), innovated special effects and film techniques (from double exposure to masking techniques to hand-tinted color and sync sound), and created opportunities for other artists (like directing the first script by future Wonder Woman creator William Marston).

Alice Guy-Blaché was one of cinema's greatest pioneers. Her independent film, financed with one week's salary, helped launch the art and craft we love so dearly, and yet most filmmakers don't even know her name. Alice's small movie had the biggest impact on my career because it made me realize that nothing could be more natural than my desire to direct moving pictures.

Although the landscape of cinema is changing rapidly and women having to fight for their right to be seen will soon become a thing of the past, today I wanted to shine a light on the woman who started it all. Alice wasn't the only female pioneer written out of the history books, but she was the first. I hope that knowing about her will inspire the next generation the same way she inspired Hitchcock and Eisenstein and countless other early filmmakers.

I will carry Alice's commitment to telling stories through my own work by no longer falling prey to the lists that omit women and the belief that making movies is thing I must prove myself worthy of. We are all natural storytellers and watching one of the world's first films, full of whimsy and magic, told through an unapologetically female lens, makes that more clear than ever. Alice Guy-Blaché was a game changer. I only wish I could have seen what she would have done in 48 hours at Run N Gun ;)