DIRECTOR: Pamela B. Green
PRODUCERS: Pamela B, Green, Joan Simon
PRODUCTION CO: Be Natural Productions
SCREENPLAY: Pamela B. Green, Cosima Littlewood
PHOTOGRAPHY: Boubkar Benzabat
EDITOR: Pamela B. Green
MUSIC: Peter G. Adams
WITH: Jodie Foster (Narrator), Alice Guy            (archive footage), Pamela B. Green, Catherine Hardwicke, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Howard Cohen, Patty Jenkins, Gale Anne Hurd, Jon Chu, Mark Romanek, Lake Bell, Ava DuVernay, Julie Delpy

FESTIVALS: Cannes

REVIEW

“If you haven’t heard of Alice Guy-Blaché, by the end of Pamela B Green’s documentary you will be singing her praises. Previously passed over by historians (and briefly written out of Gaumont’s own production history), Guy-Blaché was a pioneer of early cinema. Utilising wonderful interview footage of Guy-Blaché recorded in 1957 and 1967, blended with recovered film clips, Be Natural is an energetic investigation into the legacy of the world’s first female director.

Trained in stenography, Alice Guy-Blaché was hired as an assistant to Léon Gaumont in 1894 and soon began working behind the camera to direct demo films to sell Gaumont’s motion picture cameras. By the age of 23, she was named head of production at Gaumont and began her prolific career.

A great comic director, Guy-Blaché was well ahead of her time, creating satirical and revolutionary feminist films that explored gender, sex, representation and race. After moving to America in the early 1900s, a country she found much more welcoming than her homeland, she founded Solax studio and poured her life and soul into directing, producing and mentoring. But in 1919 her career abruptly ended.

With an eye on the current climate in Hollywood and its historical treatment of women, Green delivers a fast-paced documentary that celebrates the work of an oft-forgotten icon. Though nowhere near the reported 1,000 films Guy-Blaché wrote, produced or directed during her time, 66 of her works, now highly regarded by contemporary film historians, are available on previously released Gaumont and Kino DVD box sets.”

– Kailey Carruthers, NZIFF 2019

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Carterton
Friday, 10 June, 7.30pm

​Palmerston North   
Wednesday, 22 June, 6:00pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 5 July, 8.15pm

Timaru
Monday, 25 July, 6pm

Nelson
Tuesday, 2 August, 6pm

Canterbury   
Monday, 29 August, 7:00pm

​Whanganui   
Monday, 5 September, 7:00pm

Hamilton   
Monday, 12 September, 7.30pm

Tauranga
Thursday, 22 September, 6.30pm

​Dunedin   
Wednesday, 5 October, 7:30pm

Auckland    
Monday, 17 October, 6:00pm

​New Plymouth   
Wednesday,  9 November, 6:00pm
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French Connections is presented in
co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France