Be Natural: A História não Contada da Primeira Cineasta do Mundo

Pamela Green has done an incredible job showcasing the works of one of the most important figures in Cinema History, Alice Guy-Blache. From the clips of her films at Gaumont to her own studio Solax, Be Natural shines a light on a woman who for decades has been largely forgotten by mainstream audiences. One of my favorite scenes in the film was watching the attempts to recreate a couple of Alice Guy-Blache's films using the same camera she used. Using a camera that needed to be cranked at just the right speed to see real time speed on film makes you appreciate how much easier it is to film things today. As a student of film history, I want every moviegoer, whether they be casual or avid, to see this film and understand what Alice Guy-Blache contributed to the world of cinema. Pamela Green shows so many clips of unseen interviews with the director herself which gives you a good understanding of how she saw her own career. She's an inspiration to all aspiring filmmakers, women espeically. In the early 20th Century, Alice Guy-Blache was a woman who not only owned her own studio, but she was also a director, producer, screenwriter and actress to name a few. She also was one of the few who experimented with sound before Warner Bros perfected it with The Jazz Singer. She experimented with color tinting, special effects, and even had interracial casting which was unheard of at the time. Amazing job to everyone involved with this film, especially Pamela Green and a big thank you to the late great Alice Guy-Blache.

The director spent a decade of her life gathering evidence that Alice Guy-Blache was one of the founders of cinema, on the same level as the Lumiere Brothers, Georges Melies and Thomas Edison, and the case she makes is completely convincing. This film should be seen by everyone interested in movie history.

I watched that film during the BFI film festival and the director Pamela B Green graced us with a Q&A at the end. This documentary is a formidable labour of love, extraordinarily documented and thorough, on the life and career of the first film director who ... happened to be a woman! Alice Guy-Bache! Terrific documentary, although it was so fast-paced that I felt dizzy at times! A must watch!

Just an amazing documentary with hilarious and wonderful surprises all through it. Amazing research and use of archival film. There is one point where they show a walking tour of the film locations in Paris from Alice Guy-Blache's films and superimpose the 100+ year old films over the streets in modern day. Never seen that effect used quite that way. It shows the documentarians share their subject's inventiveness. All the interviews with the film academic community, the film archivist community, as well as working directors and actors really paint a picture of a true pioneer. This woman was there at the very beginning, inventing the art form and the business model. A real history lesson as well, as it takes you through the industry's changes as the world went through two World Wars. You forget that it is Jodie Foster narrating because the subject is so interesting. A real labor of love, I can tell a lot of people gave their time to remembering Alice Guy-Blache.

In "Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché," Jodi Foster narrates Pamela B. Green's engaging, fascinating, informative, 103-minute documentary that focuses on the remarkable, obscure career of pioneering, Paris-born, first woman filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968) who wrote, directed, and/or produced more than 1,000 films many with unconventional subject matter through her film production company Solax and tells her story through candid interview snippets with the groundbreaking filmmaker in 1964, excerpts from her letters, and black-and-white film clips and photographs and includes insightful interviews with filmmakers (such as Ava DuVernay, Catherine Hardwicke, Diablo Cody, Patricia Riggen, Tacita Dean, Julie Taymor, John Chu, Ann Fletcher, Liz Goldwyn, Cari Beauchamp, Cecile Starr, Anne Fontaine, Mark Romanek, Peter Farrelly, Floria Sigismondi, Kevin Macdonald, Maxine Haleff, Patty Jenkins, Michel Hazanavicius, Marjane Satpari, and Gary Mairs), actors (such as Sir Ben Kingsley, Julie Delpy, Evan Rachel Wood, Geena Davis, Lake Bell, Andy Samberg, Janeane Garofolo, and Kathleen Turner), producers Marc Abraham and Stephanie Dillain, Co-President of Roadside Attractions Howard Cohen, screenwriter Gale Ann Hurd, film critic Peter Bogdanovich, historians (such as Mark Wanamaker, Anthony Slide, Kevin Brownlow, Glenn Myrent, Alison McMahon, Naum 'Kleiman, and Alan Williams), Guy-Blaché memoirs co-editor Claire Clouzet, film preservationist Serge Bromberg, professors (such as Drake Stutesman, Jane Goenes, Henry Jenkins, Gigi Pritzker, Richard Koszaeski, and Vanessa Schwartz), journalist Jean-Michel Frodon, film editor Walter Murch, film archivist Dino Everett, facial recognition analyst Steve Wilkins, costume designer Deborah Nadvolman Landis, lecturer Roland-Francois Lick, cinematographers (such as Pierre-William Glenn, Claire Wickell, and John Bailey), film collector Murray Glass, visual effects supervisor Mark Stetson, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President John Bailey, and granddaughter Tatiana Page-Relo.