A Circle of the Arts: Go Ask Alice

July 1 marks the 138th birthday of the first female director in cinema history, Madame Alice Guy Blache.

Friday night, May 20, marks the Fort Lee High School Circle of the Arts, which is held every two years to showcase the artistic skills of our students in every  art form from dance, music, media and graphic works. 

What, say you, is the connection between these two events, a birthday and a  celebration of the arts? 

Something as simple as geography and as complex as the artistic soul connect the two tightly and forever.

The Fort Lee High School building opened in 1929.  The site that was chosen for this wonderful building is steeped in the one original art form born in our nation – film.  Alice Guy Balche, one of the first three film pioneers in France in the 1890s, built Solax  Studio on the present day site of the A&P Supermarket here in Fort Lee in 1912.  This site is adjacent to the high school. 

Here, from  1912 through 1918, Alice Guy produced, directed and wrote hundreds of films, and while doing so, employed a large portion of the Fort  Lee community.  Alice Guy also was a resident of Fort Lee; She lived on Lemoine Avenue near Main Street in a wonderful Victorian home – that site today is the Wells Fargo Bank. 

After 1918, Alice Guy eventually made her way to Hollywood, the new film  capital that supplanted Fort Lee, but the door was closed to her and many women. She returned to her native France never to  direct in film again. 

However she returned to New Jersey in the 1960s and died not far from her Fort Lee studio at the age of 95 in 1968.  Alice Guy is buried here in Bergen County at Maryrest Cemetery.

This week, the Fort Lee High School Academy of the Performing Arts students spoke publicly at the Board of Education meeting against cuts to arts programs in the high school. The Fort Lee Coalition for the Arts, a group of concerned citizens and  organizations formed two years ago, also spoke against these cuts at that meetings and offered help in terms of fundraising projects  to offset potential harmful cuts. 

Times are tough--no question--but can Fort Lee, a community were an American art form was born and became the film industry, sit back as the High School Academy of the Performing Arts is cut and eventually destroyed? 

What can we do? Well we can celebrate the birthday of Alice Guy Blache this July 1, 2011 by attending a fundraiser luncheon organized by the Fort Lee Film Commission. The cost of this luncheon is $35 and all proceeds will go to the Academy for the  Performing Arts in Fort Lee and the  annual Jersey Filmmakers of Tomorrow Bergen County High School Student Film Festival.   

The events of the day include a graveside wreath laying to honor Alice Guy and the luncheon, which will include, among others, our  featured speakers, County Executive Kathleen Donovan and Garden State Film Festival Executive Director Diane Raver. Following  the luncheon there will be a screening of two of Alice Guy’s Solax short films produced in Fort Lee and a clip from a documentary in  progress on Alice Guy. 

Help us complete the circle from Alice Guy and Solax in 1912 Fort Lee to the Academy of the Performing Arts in 2011 in Fort Lee –  this is the true Fort Lee circle of art. 

For ticket information on the July 1 Alice Guy Blache birthday events call the Fort Lee Film Commission at 201-693-2763 or  visit www.fortleefilm.org.