Film Comment

A New Old Master

Alice Guy Blaché Vol. 1: The Gaumont Years (1897-1907), Vol. 2: The Solax Years (1911-1914), USA; Kino Lorber

The Intrigue: The Films of Julia Crawford Ivers, USA, 1915-1916; Kino Lorber

FEW DIGITAL COMPILATIONS HAVE HAD AS REVELATORY AN effect on American film history as the six-disc box set , curated by feminist film, and a small selection of the films are available on Netflix. The amazing box set includes films by 20 female directors, many of whom also wrote, produced, and starred in their own features, series, and shorts. Alice Guy-Blaché, whose directing career began in 1896 and whose technological innovations in sound rivaled Edison’s, and Lois Weber, whose heroines have a self-reliance that makes Griffith’s Victorian damsels all the more ridiculous, receive one disc apiece. And the range of female directors and the genres they tackled make the other four discs even more astounding. There’s the wildly adventurous filmmaker and actor Nell Shipman; the expert comedian Mabel Normand directing herself Charlie Chaplin; Zora Neale Hurston’s intimate studies of African-American children playing games and dancing; Marion E. Wong’s , the first film with an all Chinese-American cast; and much more.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Film Comment

Film Comment2 min read
Graphic Detail
FOR THE POLISH DESIGNER BRONISŁAW ZELEK, words were always as important as images. In his haunting 1967 poster for Henning Carlsen’s Hunger, the title squats in the cerebrum of a ravaged anatomical skull, the rounds of its letters looking like mispla
Film Comment10 min read
Inside Man
MOVIES ARE WHAT THEY ALWAYS WERE, BUT more so. The way I keep describing the current situation is that everything you watch plays like an airplane movie now. When I say this, I’m assuming that you’ll know what I’m talking about, and that you, like me
Film Comment5 min read
Currents
C.W. WINTER AND ANDERS EDSTRÖM ELEVEN YEARS AFTER their modest, award-winning feature debut The Anchorage, C.W. Winter and Anders Edström return with an opus several times more ambitious. In The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basi

Related Books & Audiobooks