DVD & Blu-ray: ALICE GUY BLACHE - Volume 1 (The Gaumont Years) and Volume 2 (The Solax Years)

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Product Description: VOLUME 1 - After years of relative obscurity, Alice Guy Blaché is now being recognized for her role in the development of the cinematic arts. Beginning as a typist for the Gaumont Company, she volunteered to produce a series of novelty films. So successful were her films—and so efficient her methods—she eventually became the studio’s head of production. During cinema’s first decade, the multi-talented Guy Blaché experimented with color and synchronized sound (decades before these technologies would be perfected) and cultivated such diverse genres as slapstick comedy, social realism, historical epic, and fantasy. Though rooted in the theatrical style of the Belle Époque, there is a decidedly modern sensibility to her films, as she playfully discovers comic and dramatic potential in the social mores of gender and class. This collection includes films made directly by Guy Blaché at Gaumont, as well a sampling of films produced by others, under her executive supervision (for example, The Birth, the Life, and Death of Christ, 1906).

VOLUME 2 - Having pioneered the art and technology of cinema during its infancy (organizing a system of film production at the Gaumont Studios in France), Alice Guy Blaché moved to the United States where she co-founded the Solax Company, where she served as head of production. Enjoying complete creative freedom, she explored long-form storytelling, alternating between serious dramatizations of the early 20th-century American experience (Making an American Citizen, The Strike, Frozen on Love’s Trail) and playful experiments in melodrama (The Detective’s Dog). Produced more than a century ago, Guy Blaché’s films maintain their power to surprise the viewer, with moments of unexpected pathos and irreverent humor (the ribald cross-dressing comedies Officer Henderson and Cousins of Sherlocko). This collection is truly an international endeavor—2K and 4K restorations from materials preserved by the Library of Congress, British Film Institute, EYE Film Institute, George Eastman Museum, the Academy Film Library, Lobster Films, and others—and is essential viewing for anyone interested in the evolution of the industry and the art form.

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Director: Alice Guy Blaché

Starring:

Genre: Short

Runtime: 144 min

Rating: Not Rated

Language: English

Studio: Kino Lorber

Home Video Release Date: March 17, 2020