From the Archives: Alice Guy Blache

In light of the Fort Lee Film Commission symposium at the Garden State Film Festival on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Parlor Gallery (717 Cookman Ave. in Asbury Park, N.J.), we have pulled photos from our archive on the first woman director in cinema history, Madame Alice Guy Blache.

The photos include a still from the 1913 Alice Guy Blache directed Solax film, Matrimony's Speed Limit. This scene was shot in the area of Lemoine Ave. near the George Washington Bridge. Of course this was 18 years before the bridge was opened.  

The other images depict Alice Guy Blache directed films including Matrimony's speed Limit (1913).  Madame Blache directed, produced and wrote hundreds of films at her Solax Studio in Fort Lee from 1912 through the end of World War I.  

She employed hundreds of Fort Lee residents at her Lemoine Ave. studio, which was located where the present day A&P sits adjacent to Fort Lee High School.

The Fort Lee Film Commission and Fort Lee Historical Society dedicated the only historic marker in the United States to Alice Guy Blache at the Lemoine Ave. entrance to the A&P, and the marker includes photos and narrative about this special studio and the first woman director in the movies who made cinema history on the streets of Fort Lee.

Editor's Note: The author is Executive Director of the Fort Lee Film Commission.