New York Times: ‘Be Natural’ Review: Rescuing Alice Guy Blaché, a Film Pioneer, From Oblivion
At the beginning of Pamela B. Green’s lively and informative new documentary, a bevy of movie people — directors, actors, scholars and others — are asked if they know anything about Alice Guy Blaché, who is the subject of the film. A few of them do (Ava DuVernay, for one), but most admit that they have no clue. Viewers who are similarly ignorant shouldn’t feel bad, and in the best pedagogical spirit Green turns blank looks and sheepishly shrugged shoulders into a teaching moment. “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché” seeks both to help rescue Guy Blaché from oblivion and to explain how she got there in the first place.
New York Times: Overlooked No More: Alice Guy Blaché, the World’s First Female Filmmaker
Even before women had the right to vote, Blaché, in her actions and in her films, expressed female drives, desires and self-determination.
NorthJersey.com: One of the first movie moguls was a woman — and her studio was in Fort Lee
When the movie business began — roughly 1895 — it was the Wild West. There were no rules. And consequently there was no one to tell Alice Guy-Blaché that ladies do not become movie directors.
Daily Mail.com: America's First Film Town
When Tom Meyers thinks of growing up in Fort Lee, New Jersey, he always goes back to the summer of 1971 when he was 10 years old. He and his friends would go to Gus Becker's Saloon on First Street where the owner, in his late 80s, would give the boys sodas and tell them about bartending in the 1910s, when Fort Lee was crawling with movie actors, crew members, directors and producers.