Alice...

Silent film is one of the central themes of the Lumière film festival every year, and not just because of the Lumière brothers’ works…

Film concerts of all kinds, accompanying silent flicks of all lengths, reinvent the œuvres’ narratives each time. This year, the festival places a special focus on a forgotten woman, an extraordinary trailblazer: filmmaker Alice Guy! She was the first female director in the history of cinema!

The first two episodes of the biopic series Alice, directed by Virginie Verrier and Guillaume Lornegan and screened at Lumière, offer a playful and well-deserved look back at the amazing life of this artist, incarnated by Bérénice Béjo. Alice Guy was at the origin of groundbreaking innovations, inventing comedy, with her 1896 film The Cabbage Fairy (La Fée aux choux), as well as the peplum genre… in all,  she directed several hundred short works that posterity would eventually overlook in favor of films by other directors.

Alice Guy even spent part of her career in Hollywood. That didn’t stop her from being left on the sidelines for decades, erased from the annals of film history. With obvious physical energy, Bérénice Béjo uses her whole physique to underline how the simple fact of being a woman could hinder a person’s talent. The six-episode series vividly illustrates the inner workings of a flourishing industry, what was at stake and this independent young woman caught in the middle. Her boldness was mistaken by men for insolence, with a hint of inappropriate persistence… To find out more about how Alice’s journey through the world of cinema unfolds, you’ll just have to tune in to the upcoming episodes!

— Virginie Apiou