Out now: Alice Guy, First Lady of Film by Bocquet and Muller
In 1895, the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph. Less than a year later, 23-yearold
Alice Guy, the first female filmmaker in cinema history, made The Cabbage Fairy, a
60-second movie, for Léon Gaumont, going on to direct over 300 films before 1922. Her
life is a shadow history of early cinema, the chronicle of an art form coming into its own. A
free and independent woman, rubbing shoulders with luminaries such as Georges Méliès
and the Lumières, she was the first to define the professions of screenwriter and producer.
She directed the first feminist satire, then the first sword-and-sandal epic, before crossing
the Atlantic in 1907 to become the first woman to found her own production company
in New Jersey. Alice Guy died in 1969, excluded from the annals of film history. In 2011,
Martin Scorsese honoured this cinematic visionary, “forgotten by the industry she had
helped create”, describing her as “a filmmaker of rare sensitivity, with a remarkable poetic
eye and an extraordinary feel for locations”. The same can be said of Catel & Bocquet’s
luminous account of her life.
Catel Muller specializes in graphic novels portraying remarkable women. Her
biography of the feminist writer and activist Benoîte Groult won the Artémisia
Prize, and her eponymous biographies of such previously hidden figures as Kiki de
Montparnasse and Josephine Baker have been reprinted and translated worldwide.
Her award of the prestigious Prix Diagonale/Rossel in 2018 cemented her reputation
as a major graphic novelist. José-Louis Bocquet has published eight crime novels,
as well as monographs on the comics artist René Goscinny and the filmmaker H-G.
Clouzot. A successful screenwriter, he has also collaborated on graphic novels by
Serge Clerc, Steve Cuzor, Stanislas, and Philippe Berthet.
■ FIRST FEMALE DIRECTOR: The inspiring story of Alice Guy’s huge, yet largely forgotten, contribution to the beginnings of cinema.
■ NEW BIOPIC SUBJECT: Filmmaking pioneer Alice Guy, the first ever female movie director, is subject of new biopic from “The Great Hack” duo.
■ AUTHOR TRACK HISTORY: already known for their collaborations on well-regarded
biographies such as Kiki de Montparnasse and Josephine Baker.
