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Le jardin oublié : la vie et l'oeuvre d'Alice Guy-Blaché

Réalisé par Marquise Lepage
Canada, 1995 (documentaire, 53 minutes, couleurs / noir et blanc, français)
Autre titre : « The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché »
Le jardin oublié : la vie et l'oeuvre d'Alice Guy-Blaché
Image : © Office national du film du Canada
Vidéo (Office national du film du Canada) [anglais]
Vidéo (Office national du film du Canada)

Description du film :
« Un documentaire qui réhabilite la mémoire de la première femme cinéaste au monde, morte oubliée de tous, au New Jersey, en 1968, à l'âge de 95 ans. Le film reconstitue l'univers de cette femme remarquable grâce à des entrevues réalisées par les télévisions européennes autour des années 60, des extraits de ses films, des archives familiales, des témoignages de personnes qui l'ont connue, d'universitaires et d'historiens du cinéma. »
-- Office national du film du Canada (source)

Description du film [en anglais] :
« Alice Guy-Blaché was a filmmaker before the word even existed. She made her first film at the end of the last century, when cinema was still a newborn. After directing, producing and/or writing more than 700 films, she slipped into oblivion. The Lost Garden rescues the story of one of cinema's most fearless pioneers. By 1910, married and with her first baby, she founded her own production company in America. Solax became the biggest pre-Hollywood studio on the continent. But at 49, she lost her husband, her company and her illusions. The Lost Garden looks at the life and times of a woman who, with two words, changed the art of screen acting forever. 'Be natural,' she used to tell her actors. Television interviews from the sixties reveal Guy-Blaché to be witty, articulate and elegant. Her films are cleverly edited to illustrate the events occurring in her personal life. Granddaughter Adrienne and daughter-in-law Roberta offer photographs and press clippings from her private albums, while film historians point out the artistry and innovativeness of her work. The Lost Garden eulogizes a woman whom history tried hard to forget. Alice Guy-Blaché makes it back to the screen in time for cinema's one hundredth anniversary. »
-- National Film Board of Canada (source)


Générique (partiel) :
Scénario : Marquise Lepage
Produit par : Josée Beaudet
Participants : Adrienne Blaché-Channing, Roberta Blaché, Nicolas Seydoux, André Gaudreault, Alan Williams, Alison McMahan, Anthony Slide
Montage images : France Pilon
Musique : Robert M. Lepage
Société de production : Office national du film du Canada / National Film Board of Canada
(sources)

Citations sur Le jardin oublié : la vie et l'oeuvre d'Alice Guy-Blaché [en anglais]

« At the heart of [Marquise] Lepage's documentary is a television interview that [Alice] Guy-Blaché gave in the 1960s, a few years before she died. Well into her eighties, the white-haired elfin woman comes across as quick-minded and clear-eyed about her career, a practical pioneer with a sense of the important part she played in early filmmaking. For her interview, and the segments of Guy-Blaché's films that are interposed throughout the documentary, The Lost Garden is valuable and illuminating. Unfortunately, the subject of the film is far more fascinating than its frame. Director [Marquise] Lepage's film is an exercise in historical retrieval that threatens to bury its subject in coyness. »
-- Liam Lacey (source)

« 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)

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