Alice Guy: a pioneer of cinema conquering America
For the first time in its history, the Deauville American Film Festival is dedicating a retrospective to Alice Guy’s American films, honoring a visionary director who has remained in the shadows for too long.
Alice Guy’s story is an extraordinary one, full of firsts, the story of an adventurer and a pioneer.
The first female fiction director in the history of cinema, the first female filmmaker, the first woman to establish studios in the United States… An outstanding technician, screenwriter, producer, director, and acting coach, she is a founding figure of world cinema, both from an artistic and an economic and industrial perspective.
In 2025, the Deauville Festival will be celebrating with an exceptional selection of rare American films, some of which have never been seen in France and have been recently restored with the help of the Library of Congress.
Born in France in 1873, Alice Guy began her career at Gaumont at the very end of the 19th century, where she directed hundreds of films, some of which were already sound and colorized, even though the language of cinema was still in its early stages. In 1907, she moved to the United States and in 1910 founded her own film studio, the Solax Film Company, near New York. She dominated American film production and box office, working with the biggest stars of the time, before returning to France in 1922,bankrupted by the new power of Hollywood. She is one of the ten women honored at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games on July 26, 2024. Her transatlantic journey made her a true bridge between two film cultures. Both a French pioneer and a major figure in American silent cinema, Alice Guy is now being rediscovered as a link between Europe and Hollywood, between the invention of cinema and the rise of an industry.
With this retrospective, the Deauville Festival is part of a movement to rewrite the history of cinema by shining a light on a woman who has been forgotten by the official narrative.
The program for this retrospective consists of six short films, totaling 1 hour and 11 minutes of screen time, which will be presented by Véronique Le Bris, founder of the Alice Guy Award and author of the recent biography “Alice Guy, the most daring of cinema pioneers”.
RETROSPECTIVE PROGRAM:
- Roads Leads Home (1911) (11’) – unreleased
- Mixed Pets (1911) (11’) – unreleased
- Greater Love Hath No Man (1911) (10’)
- The Girl In The Arm-Chair (1912) (10’)
- The Sewer (1912) (15’) – unreleased
- Officer Henderson (1913) (14’) – unreleased
