July 1st is Alice Guy Blaché 's birthday. Madame Blaché , was the first woman director in cinema history and she built Solax Studio in Fort Lee in 1912. There she produced, directed and wrote hundreds of films through World War 1. After the war she went to Hollywood and the director's door was closed to her as it was when she thereafter returned to her native France. She returned to NJ in the 1960s and died a few short miles from her Fort Lee Studio.
Madame Blaché is buried at Maryrest Cemetery which is located at 25 Seminary Road, Mahwah NJ.
We want to start a tradition of the Fort Lee Film Commission of placing a wreath of flowers on Madame Blaché's grave each year on her birthday of July 1 - she was born July 1, 1873 and died March 24, 1968.
Please if you can get out of work next Thursday, July 1st, for a while or if you are otherwise available join us at 11am for this short but important ceremony. We hope that once the Director's Guild of America inducts Madame Blaché in the coming years we can have a DGA marker placed on her grave.
All the best,
Tom Meyers
Fort Lee Film Commission
(201) 693-2763
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