frfilmtv1-2, Exercise 3: Alice Guy

Model answer:

Alice Guy began as a secretary to Léon Gaumont in the 1890s and became one of the first directors at Gaumont, where she is often credited with one of the earliest story films, La Fée aux choux (the date and the "first" claim are disputed). Around 1907 she moved to the United States with her husband Herbert Blaché and in 1910 founded her own company, Solax, later building a large studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, then a centre of American film-making (check the wording about its size). She returned to France in the early 1920s after the company failed.

Her story is a lesson about credit because early films were often unsigned, records were lost and later credit tended to go to men, so historians have had to work to restore her name, and some of her claims are still argued over.