The Legacy of Alice Guy-Blaché

Runtime: 120 Mins <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">PR CONTACT </li><li style="flex:1">SALES CONTACT: </li></ul>The DDA Group <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a>310-205-4868 The Film Sales Company <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a><a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a>212-481-5020 The Legacy of Alice Guy-Blaché “When Pamela Green first talked to me about Alice Guy Blaché I thought, ‘how is it possible that I’ve never heard her?’ One of the great pioneers of our industry who created films alongside the Lumières Brothers, Léon Gaumont, Georges Méliès... As far as we know, she is the first female film director, possibly one of the first narrative filmmakers EVER. A writer, producer, studio head, with a 1000 films under her belt... The facts in this documentary blew my mind. It’s an honor to voice this story. May Alice ’s story finally set the record straight and resto re her place in cinema history.” -Jodie Foster, Actress, Director, Producer “Alice Guy Blache’s contribution to early cinema was monumental on several levels. Her near total absence from the vast majority of cinema history books has been nothing short of criminal. This beautiful, entertaining and obsessively researched film makes huge strides in righting this incredible injustice.” - Mark Romanek, Director. “It was Hugh Hefner’s lifelong love of movies that inspired the significant contributions he made over the years toward preserving, restoring and celebrating films and the trailblazers who helped create them. Although Hef didn’t live long enough to see thi s documentary completed, he was looking forward to Alice Guy- Blaché’s story being told with the hope that she would finally be given her well deserved place in history.” – Dick Rosenzweig, Producer “It’s very humbling to see how advanced Alice’s work was a hundred years ago. It reminds you that the history of an art form is not a straight line, and that progress - whatever that means - is more dependent on people than it is on time”. -Anne Fontaine, Actress, Director, Writer Logline Pamela B. Green’s Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, narrated by Jodie Foster, is a feature documentary that rewrites film history, revealing for the first time the full scope of the life and work of cinema’s first female director, screenwriter, producer, and studio owner Alice Guy-Blaché. Synopsis Narrated by Jodie Foster, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché is a documentary about the first female filmmaker, Alice Guy-Blaché, which explores the heights of fame and financial success she achieved before she was shut out from the very industry she helped create. Guy-Blaché started her career as a secretary to Léon Gaumont and, at 23, was inspired to make her own film called La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy), one of the first narrative films ever made. After her filmmaking career at Gaumont (1896-1907), she had a second decade-long career in the U.S., where she built and ran her own studio in Fort Lee, N.J. Over the span of her career, she wrote, produced or directed 1,000 films, including 150 with synchronized sound during the ‘silent’ era. Her work includes comedies, westerns and dramas, as well as films with groundbreaking subject matter such as child abuse, immigration, Planned Parenthood, and female empowerment. She also etched a place in history by making the earliest known surviving narrative film with an all-black cast. Green has dedicated more than eight years of research in order to discover the real story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968) – not only highlighting her pioneering contributions to the birth of cinema but also her acclaim as a creative force and entrepreneur in the earliest years of movie-making. Green interviewed Patty Jenkins, Diablo Cody, Ben Kingsley, Geena Davis, Ava DuVernay, Michel Hazanavicius, and Julie Delpy - to name a few--who comment on Guy-Blache’s innovations.ꢀGreen discovered rare footage of televised interviews and long archived audio interviews which can be heard for the first time in Be Natural, which affords Alice Guy-Blaché to tell her own story. Director’s Statement Who were the first film directors? Responses may vary, but they would rarely include Alice Guy-Blaché, who as early as 1896 made one of the first narrative films in history. Perhaps the most famous woman you’ve never heard of, Alice is a person that should never be forgotten which is why I’ve dedicated over 8 years to make this film to tell her story. The core of this film is the previously untold story of Alice, a creative force, entrepreneur, leader, and mentor in a new field that she helped pioneer. This film is the celebration of a woman who was there at the beginning of moving pictures, at the intersection of innovation, technology, and storytelling that later became the entertainment industry as we know it today. Since the film was centered around a driving female force in the film industry, I knew it was important for me to get a strong female to narrate. Jodie Foster was a no-brainer. She is an amazing actress, director, and producer. And she speaks perfect French. We needed somebody who understood the language and the culture to help tell the story seamlessly. Beyond Foster, the support from the film community has been instrumental in the making of this film. Robert Redford was the film’s first supporter, with Catherine Hardwicke being the first in-depth interview I was able to conduct. What may be the biggest surprise to some people is that Hugh Hefner is the largest single donor to the film. The outpouring of support from Hollywood in general has been overwhelmingly positive and has encouraged me to complete this film. I was first moved to begin production on this film as I was watching AMC and discovered a show called Reel Models about pioneering women in cinema, including Alice Guy-Blaché. I didn’t go to film school, but I work in the entertainment industry and I was surprised that I had never heard of her. I asked several people and I realized that they too had never heard of her. And I just kept asking. How could such an important figure in the birth of cinema be unknown? It became clear I had to tell her story. Having worked on Robert Redford movies doing title sequences, I asked him and he was surprised that he did not know of her. The descendants of Alice Guy-Blaché gave us full access to her papers, photos, diaries, artifacts, and other materials in her personal archive. As part of the detective work for this film, we discovered a lost film collection, one of the oldest in the world, and identified some 10 films that Alice directed or produced. All of this allowed me to fill in the missing links in the story – and along with the new information, I discovered there were many controversies surrounding this remarkably creative woman. Alice was working at the cutting edge of technological advancement in film, and I wanted to use the latest and the best technologies available today to tell her story. The aesthetic approach is guided by the look and feel of the turning point between the Belle Époque and the early 20th century filtered through a modern lens. We aim not just to look back at Alice’s past, but to stand next to her and look into her future – our present. I felt like now was the right time, more than ever, to step forward and help bring Alice’s story to light, given all the current conversation about women’s rights and how more often than not, women’s stories are pushed to the shadows throughout history. My hope is that this film furthers the conversation around how necessary women are to the art of cinema. If people know about Alice—or knew about and continued to remember her contributions to early cinema-- how different might the creative and business landscape be? There were many, many women filmmakers in the early years but history has forgotten them. It’s time to change that. In all, and in many ways, the film bridges the gap between past and present, and I believe it will inspire future generations to pick up their tools (whatever they may be) and go for it – inspiration for the generations to come. There's an Alice in all of us. If you have a dream, and you visualize it, you can do it. About the Filmmakers Pamela B. Green (Writer, Director, Producer) Originally from New York, Pamela B. Green lived most of her life in Europe and Israel and as a result, is fluent in English, French, Italian, and Hebrew. In 2005, she founded PIC, an entertainment and motion design boutique based in LosꢀAngeles, California. Green’s work ranges from feature filmꢀmain titles, motion graphics, creative directing, directing and producing music videos and commercials. She is known in the industry for creating titles sequences and story sequences using her knowledge of graphic design, animation, editorial, and archival rare stock footage research. Green recently founded Legwork Collective, whose “media detectives” find and obtain rights to unusual and rarely seen before footage, stills, audio, and artifacts for use in feature films, documentaries, TV series, commercials and other industries outside of entertainment. Nominated for an Emmy for the documentaryꢀBhutto, Pamela B. Green has produced main titles, created and advised on internal story sequences and marketing campaigns for films such as the Bourne series, Fast and Furious, The Muppets, and several Marvel comic book franchises. She has also worked on films such as The Cabin the Woods and The Kingdom. For television and streaming, she has created titles for Supergirl, The Flash, and Quantico among many others. In addition, ꢀPamela B. ꢀGreen has creative directed and produced TV show and award show packages for, among others, the Academy Awards, Billboard Awards, and Critics Choice Awards, and MTV Awards.ꢀ Joan Simon (Writer, Executive Producer) Joan Simon is a writer, curator, editor and arts administrator who works independently for museums, foundations, publishers and diverse media organizations in the United States and in Europe. For the past four years she has lived in Santa Monica, California and for twenty years prior was based in Paris. A number of her projects have been devoted to artists who made important work in France and the United States, whether they were born there or not. Among these were those made during Simon’s five years as curator-at-large for New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, including Alice Guy-Blaché: Cinema Pioneer and Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933 (with the Centre Pompidou). Simon’s Sheila Hicks: Fifty Years was the first retrospective in either country for this American artist who has lived in Paris for the past five decades, and her Lorna Simpson show was the first retrospective in Europe devoted to this influential African-American artist (Jeu de Paume in collaboration with the Foundation of the Exhibition of Photography). Most recently for Pamela B. Green’s feature documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, Simon served with Green as co-writer of the script and is one of the film’s Executive Producers. A former managing editor of Art in America (1974–83), Simon has written books, contributed to journals and exhibition catalogues, as well as to films about art and artists. John Ptak (Executive Producer) UCLA film school alumnus, John Ptak, began his career as an art house theater manager, after which he joined The American Film Institute, where he was part of the initial team that established AFI's Center for Advanced Studies in Los Angeles. In 1971, he became an agent with International Famous Agency, now ICM, later moving to William Morris and then to CAA, where he became a partner. He left CAA in 2006 to form Arsenal, which provides advisory services to film production companies and financiers. As an agent, he set up such films as Airplane, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Coal Miner’s Daughter, Jaws, Taxi driver, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Green Card and Until the End of the World. His personal clients included Bruce Beresford, Brian De Palma, Costa Gavras, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, National Lampoon, Sydney Pollack, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Peter Weir. At CAA, he expanded the role of the talent agent by representing the financing and distribution arrangements of over 100 films, working with Woody Allen, Kenneth Branagh, Jane Campion, Kevin Costner, Paul Haggis and Anthony Minghella on pictures such as Crash, Dances with the Wolves, Driving Miss Daisy, The Piano, Swingers and The Talented Mr. Ripley. He was an executive in CAA’s corporate consultancy on accounts as Coca-Cola, IMAX, and the French bank, Credit Lyonnais, with whom he participated in the restructuring of MGM and the rebirth of United Artists. Ptak executive produced Peter Weir's The Way Back, Matt Reeves’ Let Me In, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Paranssus and Reasonable Doubt. He is a member of The National Film Preservation Board, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting Advisory Council and The National Film Preservation Foundation. Geralyn Dreyfous – (Executive Producer) Geralyn Dreyfous has a wide, distinguished background in the arts, extensive experience in consulting in the philanthropic sector, and participates on numerous boards and initiatives. She is the Founder of the Utah Film Center, a non-profit that curates free screenings and outreach programs for communities throughout Utah. In 2007, she co-founded Impact Partners Film Fund with Dan Cogan, bringing together financiers and filmmakers so that they can create great films that entertain audiences, enrich lives, and ignite social change. In 2013, Geralyn co-founded Gamechanger Films, the first for-profit film fund dedicated exclusively to financing narrative features directed by women. Geralyn's independent executive producing and producing credits include the Academy Award winning Born Into Brothels; Emmy-nominated The Day My God Died, Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award winning The Square; Academy Award-nominated and Peabody Award-winning The Invisible War; and multiple film festival winners such as Miss Representation, Meet the Patels, Anita, In Football We Trust, The Hunting Ground, Dreamcatcher, Alive Inside, STEP, Bending the Arc and Be Natural. Geralyn was honored by the International Documentary Association with the Amicus Award in 2013 for her significant contribution to documentary filmmaking. Variety recognized Geralyn in their 2014 Women’s Impact Report highlighting her work in the entertainment industry. #### CREDITS Cast: <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">... </li><li style="flex:1">Alice Guy-Blaché </li><li style="flex:1">Herself (archive footage) </li></ul>Other Cast: <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Agnès Varda </li><li style="flex:1">... </li></ul>... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Herself Himself Herself Herself Himself Himself Herself Herself Herself Himself Himself Herself Herself Herself Herself Herself Herself Herself Himself Herself Herself Herself Himself Herself Herself Herself Herself Himself Himself Himself Herself Alan Williams Alison McMahan Anastasia Masaro Anand Tucker Andy Samberg Anne Fletcher Anne Fontaine Ava DuVernay Ben Kingsley Bobby Cohen Bryony Dixon Catherine Hardwicke Cathy Schulman Cari Beauchamp Cecile Starr Deborah Nadoolman Diablo Cody Dino Everett Drake Stutesman Elsie Fisher Evan Rachel Wood Frederik Du Chau Floria Sigismondi Gale Anne Hurd Geena Davis Gillian Armstrong Howard Cohen James Bobin Jan-Christopher Horak Janeane Garofalo <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Jane Gaines </li><li style="flex:1">... </li></ul>... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Herself Himself Herself Narrator Himself Himself Herself Herself Herself Herself Himself Himself Herself Himself Himself Himself Himself Herself Herself Himself Himself Himself Herself Himself Himself Himself Himself Himself Himself Himself Himself Herself Himself Himself Herself Herself Himself Himself Jean-Michel Frodon Joan Simon Jodie Foster John Bailey Jon M. Chu Julie Anne Robinson Julie Corman Julie Delpy Julie Taymor Kevin Macdonald Kevin Stitt Lake Bell Marc Abraham Marc Wanamaker Mark Stetson Mark Romanek Marjane Satrapi Maxine Haleff Michel Hazanavicius Neil Hunt Lorenzo di Bonaventura Patty Jenkins Peter Billingsley Peter Farrelly Peter Decherney Pierre-William Glenn Rob Haworth Robert von Dassanowsky Richard Abel Serge Bromberg Stephanie Allain Tom Meyers Vadim Perelman Valerie Steele Vanessa Schwartz Walter Murch Wayne Kramer Other Crew Music by Peter G. Adams Film Editing by Pamela B. Green Dana Archer Greg Bernstein Gala Minasova ... ... ... Public Relations Legal Services Researcher <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">René Perraudin </li><li style="flex:1">... </li><li style="flex:1">Second Unit Director </li></ul>(Germany Unit Camera & Electrical Department) Director of Photography (Second Unit Saint Louis Additional Photography) Director of Photography (Second Unit Austria) Camera Operator <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Joshua Lassing </li><li style="flex:1">... </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Sebastian Thaler </li><li style="flex:1">... </li></ul>... ... Alexandra Useche Stephen M. Rickert Jr. Editorial Department Additional Editor Produced By Pamela B. Green Abigail Disney Caroleen Feeney Daniela Roth Jarik Van Sluijs Michel Merkt Nion McEvoy Jamie Wolf ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Producer Associate Producer Associate Producer Associate Producer Associate Producer Associate Producer Associate Producer Executive Producer <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Joan Simon </li><li style="flex:1">... </li><li style="flex:1">Executive Producer </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Jodie Foster </li><li style="flex:1">... </li><li style="flex:1">Executive Producer </li></ul>John Ptak Hugh Hefner ... ... Executive Producer Executive Producer (as Hugh M. Hefner) <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Executive Producer </li><li style="flex:1">Geralyn White Dreyfous </li><li style="flex:1">... </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Jamie Wolf </li><li style="flex:1">... </li><li style="flex:1">Executive Producer </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">John Ptak </li><li style="flex:1">... </li></ul>... ... ... ... ... ... ... Executive Producer Executive Producer Executive Producer Co-Executive Producer Co-Executive Producer Co-Executive Producer Co-Producer Robert Redford Regina K. Scully Cameron O’Reilly Diane Stewart Gerald Herman Cosima Littlewood <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Gala Minasova </li><li style="flex:1">Co-Producer </li></ul>

The Legacy of Alice Guy-Blaché

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