News & Updates

I just stumbled on this website in Spanish devoted to Alice Guy, which starts with a blurb from the Spanish edition of my book:

Alice Guy, pionera del cine narrativo

Fort Lee Film Commission’s Reel Jersey Girls Women’s History Month Film Festival in March at the Fort Lee Public Library 

UPWIFT presents:
A Celebration of the First Woman Filmmaker, Alice Guy-Blaché

Three theaters within the UPWIFT region will present films by the first female filmmaker, Alice Guy-Blaché, as well as sneak-peeks into a new documentary about Alice by Pamela Green and a Q&A with the filmmaker.

Press release for the three events here.

Upstate Films/Rhinebeck, Sunday, December 11, 1:00PM:

A retrospective of Alice Guy's films will be shown tonight (September 23) as part of the Woman with a Movie Camera series at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. The 90-minute program includes:

THE DRUNKEN MATTRESS / LE MATELAS ALCOOLIQUE (France, 1906, 7 min, 35mm, b&w, silent. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

THE STRIKE (U.S., 1912, 12 min, 35mm, b&w, silent. Print courtesy of the British Film Institute.)

This filmography is an accompaniment to the article "Stereotypes and Archetypes in Early Spanish Cinema," by Francisco Griñán, edited and translated by Alison McMahan, New Review of Film and Television, digital publication  22 July 2016.

The films listed are only the ones mentioned in the article but it provides a good overview of early film production in Spain. Included are the films Alice Guy and her cameraman Anatole Thiberville filmed in Spain in October-November of 1905.

FILMOGRAPHY

* ph: phonoscenes
** sd: sound movie

Although we can't be sure who filmed the 1905 Gaumont hand-colored movies La malagueña y el torero y Le Tango, we have identified one of the performers. La Bella Romero (real name, Elsa Romero) was born in Malaga in the late nineteenth century. By early 1902 she was dancing tangos and sevillanas in Madrid (El Globo (EG) 1902, Madrid, 3 January, 3). In 1903 she debuted at the Teatro Novedades in Barcelona, where she was a great success. Her fame continued to grow. She even performed with La Fornarina and appeared in films. 

The Journey

Alice Guy traveled around Spain for six weeks, from October 15th to the end of November of 1905,  filming in Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Córdoba and Seville. Guy's mission was to film a series of chronophone films in Spanish and pave the way for Gaumont film distribution in Spain. Guy has also been tentatively credited with filming La Malagueña y el torero (1905) and Le Tango (1905) while on this journey.  Francisco Griñán has investigated her journey in a way never done before.

I just completed a translation and edit of  Stereotypes and Archetypes in Early Spanish Cinema by Francisco Griñán for the New Review of Film and Television Studies. The paper is a case study of how national archetypes and stereotypes get put into place.