Quote:
"Hold onto your hats, all you Hollywood guys. According to the informative documentary, The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché, the first person ever to direct a fictional film was a woman. Alice Guy-Blaché's 1896 short, The Cabbage Fairy, preceded the early narrative films of Georges Méliès by several months. Between 1896 and 1913, Guy-Blaché wrote, directed and produced more than 700 pictures. In 1953, she was awarded the Legion of Honor medal by the French government. Yet, as Marquise Lepage's film shows us, she has been almost totally erased from cinema history. Lepage doesn't push the gender angle. She doesn't have to; the facts speak for themselves."
-- Eleanor Ringel

Source:
Ringel, Eleanor. "The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blache." Review of Le jardin oublié : la vie et l'oeuvre d'Alice Guy-Blaché. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 20, 1996.