Christina Kotlar - Writer/Director - Film Town 1910: When Hollywood was in Jersey and the studio owner was a woman

Hollywood didn’t start out as a boy’s club, nor did it start in Hollywood. Alice Guy Blache was the industry’s first woman director and the co-owner of Solax, a film studio built in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 1910. Writer/Director Christina Kotlar has been celebrating Alice and working to bring her forgotten story to the world. We’ll talk about Alice’s groundbreaking life and career before there were barriers to inclusion, including directing the first film with an all African American cast. 

More on Christina and her work. More on Alice. We talk about filmmaker Pamela Green and the Alice documentary Be Natural. Filmmaker Marquise Lepage and her film The Lost Garden. More on Fort Lee where it all happened. Alice's memoir. Her 1896 film The Cabbage Fairy. Alison's McMann's book The Lost Visionary. Alice's legacy in female filmmakers like Maya Deren and her 1943 film Meshes of the Afternoon. Suffragist Alice Paul. Trainee and later rival, Edison. And Alice's final resting place. We also mention the very first episode of Hearthside Salons featuring Emmy winning puppeteer, Liz Hara. 

And as always, more information on PageCraft's upcoming screenwriting classes and workshops.