Alice Guy Blach Volume 1: The Gaumont Years (DVD)

After years of relative obscurity, Alice Guy Blache is now being recognized for her role in the development of the cinematic arts. Beginning as a typist for the Gaumont Company, she volunteered to produce a series of novelty films. So successful were her filmsand so efficient her methodsshe eventually became the studios head of production. During cinemas first decade, the multi-talented Guy Blache experimented with color and synchronized sound (decades before these technologies would be perfected) and cultivated such diverse genres as slapstick comedy, social realism, historical epic, and fantasy. Though rooted in the theatrical style of the Belle epoque, there is a decidedly modern sensibility to her films, as she playfully discovers comic and dramatic potential in the social mores of gender and class. This collection includes films made directly by Guy Blache at Gaumont, as well a sampling of films produced by others, under her executive supervision (for example, The Birth, the Life,