Movies: Alice Guy-Blaché

Program of 13 short films by Alice Guy made between 1898 and 1907. She is the first fiction filmmaker in the history of cinema. It was she who suggested to Léon Gaumont that he abandon simple animated views to shoot small scripted stories. Authorizat...

Vinnie, Colonel Beggs' daughter, complains to her father that Lieutenant Sterling is paying her unwelcome attentions. The Colonel assures his daughter that she has no cause for fear. He immediately forgets the incident, as important military developm...

Old Joel Smith is charged with murder in the first degree. At the trial he pleads in opposition to his own lawyers. He explains that he is now too old to be of any assistance to his widowed daughter and his grand-children who are dependent on him for...

Fantastic Flowers is a compilation of short silent films produced between 1906 and 1920, displaying amazing colours that were applied to each frame using the Pathécolor process, or other similar stencilling techniques. Bonsoir – La Fée aux fleurs (19...

"Wild Bill" Gray is a renegade and a wife-beater. He is about to start on some expedition of crime and his wife implores him to stay at home. She receives a beating for her trouble. Jim, a cowboy, rides past the shack, hears Mrs. Gray's screams and i...

A youth, the only survivor of a shipwreck, is rescued by two old fishermen. One of the fishermen, who has a little girl the boy's age, decides to adopt him. Ten years later a New York lawyer comes to the fishing town and wants to adopt the child who ...

Mrs. Hurley is a wealthy old lady who is rather proud of her antecedents. Her son, a young, clean-cut, college-bred man, like other gilded youths, makes the acquaintance of an actress and the inevitable follows. He marries her, much against the com...

A blind man begging for change tries to outsmart a cop....

A turn-of-the-last-century hand-tinted short, which features two women, Miss Lally and Miss Julyett, dancing at a ball. By the legendary French filmmaker Alice Guy....

A living statue causes trouble for unsuspecting bystanders....

Noble born Mignon is stolen by a band of gypsies as a child. Her mother dies from grief and her father, unhinged by the double blow, gives up his ancestral home for the roaming life of a minstrel wandering from place to place in search of his child. ...

Norma, a dancer, receives many presents from admirers. Among them she finds a peculiar looking box, out of which spring several poisonous snakes. Nelson, a detective, is called upon to solve the mystery....

An alcoholic is inadvertently sewn into a mattress....

A hapless man tries to get undressed only to find himself magically layered in even more clothes....

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Daisy Jones had been married just a year when her husband failed to kiss her one morning, and she decided that he did not love her any more....

A lady uses her maid to lick her stamps, when an overtly excited man notices the maid, forcibly kisses her, and they wind up stuck to each other....

George Mélies made a version of this a few years later, often titled Une Indigestion, but Guy-Blaché’s earlier film Chirurgie Fin de Siecle (1900) is more widely available. And it’s not one to watch the night before an operation. In this clinic, a si...

Cops chase a pair of burglars on the rooftops of the city....

Two apprentice violin makers are in love with the same girl, who happens to be the daughter of their mentor. A violin competition is scheduled, with the winner being the one who will marry the girl....