News

Cari Beauchamp, the widely respected historian and author of several books on Hollywood who often appeared on Turner Classics Movies programming and at the network’s annual TCM Classic Film Festival, has died. She was 74.

TCM posted a tribute to Beauchamp on its Twitter/X page Friday.

“We are saddened to hear of the loss of one of our TCM family, trailblazing historian Cari Beauchamp,” the network wrote today. Without her invaluable work, many female creatives would be lost to history. We are grateful for her many contributions to our network over the years.”

Beauchamp’s work focused on the role of women in Hollywood, including in her books Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood and Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s. She also wrote Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years, edited Anita Loos...

Exclusive: Nathalie Seaver has been promoted to Executive Vice President at Jamie Wolf’s award-winning production company, Foothill Productions.

In her new role, she will continue to work closely with Wolf to expand Foothill’s presence in upcoming feature films and documentaries, while supporting filmmakers under the Foothill banner.

“Our goal has always been to support extraordinary films, and Nathalie has been crucial in expanding our ability to be a great partner to and resource for filmmakers,” said Wolf. “I’m thrilled to have her continuing this important work at Foothill.”

Seaver joined Foothill in 2018 as a Creative and Marketing consultant, and has worked there on projects including Emmy and Peabody-nominated documentary Be Natural; Jessica Earnshaw’s Jacinta, which won the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival; and Mapplethorpe, The Director’s Cut, Ondi Timoner’s scripted portrait of the iconic photographer, among others.

A narrative feature biopic is in the works about female directing pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché from the director of “Be Natural,” the 2018 documentary that profiled the silent cinema icon.

Guy-Blaché was the first woman to ever direct a film and between 1896 and 1906 was likely the only female director in the world. Across her 25-year career, she directed over 700 short silent films across all genres, and many of her films helped pioneer new sound and color-tinting techniques for other filmmakers. And by 1912 she had founded her own studio on the East Coast and directed the film “A Fool And His Money,” the first film with an all-African-American cast.

Pamela B. Green, who directed, edited, produced and co-wrote the documentary that premiered at Cannes in 2018, will direct the untitled new biopic and write the screenplay with Joan Simon and Cosima Littlewood, who also worked on “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché.

Exclusive: The filmmakers behind acclaimed Cannes 2018 documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché are re-teaming on a narrative biopic about their subject, the little-known but remarkable cinema pioneer, who was the first ever female film director, screenwriter, producer, and studio owner.

Active from the late 19th century, Frenchwoman Guy-Blaché was in the room when the Lumière brothers held the first ever cinema screening in Paris in 1895. Inspired by what she saw, the Gaumont secretary went on to become an in-house film-maker at the French studio.

Guy-Blaché would travel to the U.S. where she became artistic director and a co-founder of Solax Studios in Flushing, New York, and a prominent investor in a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which was the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood.

During her career, she made more than 1,000 short and silent films, including comedies, westerns and dramas,...

Faces Places It's been a while since we turned our streaming spotlight on a country and so we're putting the focus on France this week and, specifically, its female filmmakers. The country has a proud history of women in film, stretching all the way back to the world's first female director, producer and studio head Alice Guy-Blaché, who shot her first film The Cabbage Fairy in 1896. We're celebrating her pioneering work as our short selection this week and if you want to learn more about her, then documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché is a great place to start and available on Amazon Prime. If you're looking for more streaming inspiration, you can read our Stay-At-Home Seven here.

Faces, Places, Curzon Home Cinema, Amazon (from £3.49)

Although born in Belgium, director Agnès Varda went on to become not just a key player in the French New Wave...

Upi France, Memento, Pyramide and Arizona reveals strategies after three-month hiatus.

France’s 2,000 cinemas will begin reopening their doors today (Monday June 22) after a 14-week closure which was enforced on March 14 as part of the country’s Covid-19 pandemic lockdown measures. The country’s theatres have never gone dark for such a prolonged period in the 120-year history of cinema, not even during World War Two,

“The large majority of cinemas will reopen, those remaining closed, are mainly those that tend to shut over the summer in any case, but it’s very marginal,” said Marc-Olivier Sebbag, managing director of...

By Glenn Dunks

Have you heard? The Academy has announced the longlist of eligible titles for the 2019 Best Documentary Feature category. All 159 of ‘em; they don’t call it a longlist for nothing. The 15-wide shortlist will be derived from these and from there the five nominees will be chosen by the documentary branch.

As I suspected, Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old is not on the list. It is also worth noting – as I have done all year – that Amazing Grace gambled with the odds last year on a qualifying run and sadly didn’t make it. There were only a few films that we have written about in Doc Corner that either did not submit or were not eligible including Vision Portraits, The Raft, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché and Beyoncé’s Homecoming would be the best of that lot.

All the big...

“Apollo 11” was the big winner at the fourth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards on Sunday in New York City.

The film took home the award for documentary feature, as well as editing for Todd Douglas Miller and score for Matt Morton. “Apollo 11” was also honored with archival documentary and science/nature documentary prizes.

There was a tie for director between Peter Jackson for “They Shall Not Grow Old,” and Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar for “American Factory.” “They Shall Not Grow Old” also brought home the award for innovative documentary. “American Factory” nabbed the prize for political documentary.

The inaugural D. A. Pennebaker Award, formerly known as the Critics’ Choice lifetime achievement award, was presented to Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker’s longtime collaborator and widow. Michael Apted received the landmark award in honor of his “Up” series.

The ceremony, hosted by “Property Brothers” star Jonathan Scott, was held at Bric in Brooklyn.

“The Biggest Little Farm” leads nominees for the fourth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, with seven bids, followed by “Apollo 11” and “They Shall Not Grow Old.” “One Child Nation” received five nominations.

The winners will be presented their awards at a gala, hosted by Property Brothers’ Jonathan Scott, on Nov. 10 at Bric in Brooklyn.

The awards honor documentaries released in theaters, on TV and on major digital platforms, as determined by the voting of qualified Cca members.

A new honor, the D.A. Pennebaker Award, will be presented to Frederick Wiseman. Michael Apted will receive the landmark award for his work on the “Up” series of films, with “63 Up” opening this year.

“As the film and television industry constantly evolves, documentaries remain a vibrant creative art form that entertains as well as informs,” said Cca CEO Joey Berlin. “We are proud that our awards event has become a...

Slate deal includes ‘The Perfect Candidate’ and ‘Happy as Lazzaro’.

The UK’s Modern Films has struck a slate deal with Amazon Prime Video, comprising 10 female-led features and documentaries.

The films, which include Haifaa Al Mansour’s Venice Competition title The Perfect Candidate and Alice Rohrwacher’s Cannes best screenplay winner Happy As Lazzaro, will be made available on the streaming platform following their theatrical release.

The Perfect Candidate, about a young Saudi doctor who becomes the first woman to run for office in her local city elections, is set for release in the UK and Ireland in spring 2020 and...

Exclusive: U.S. art house distributor Kino Lorber is launching film and TV VOD streaming platform Kino Now, we can reveal. The service, which includes options to rent and buy, currently hosts 600 titles from the company’s catalog and includes early access to new releases. The number of titles is set to double by the end of the year.

Kino Lorber, which will unveil the platform at a stateside event this evening, tells us the service will be annually refreshed with more than 50 new theatrical releases from Kino Lorber’s first-run and repertory divisions and more than 500 yearly additional titles as “festival direct” exclusives and indie art house digital premieres.

Movies will be generally available around 30-90 days after their theatrical release but some will also get day-and-date releases. Most titles will be $9.99 or less. New releases and certain films that are considered premium will be $14.99 or $19.99 if they are day-and-date releases.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options–not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)

On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin embarked on a historic lunar odyssey, successfully landing on the moon and then returning to Earth. Free of talking heads, reenactments, and newly-recorded narration, the new documentary Apollo 11 takes viewers on this nine-day journey, constructed from astounding, never-before-seen 65mm Panavision, 35mm, and 16mm footage, as well as audio culled from over 18,000 hours of tapes. A perhaps initially unintended result when Nasa handed over this remarkably pristine footage to director Todd Douglas Miller, his documentary is also a fascinating time capsule of this specific era. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: Hulu...

By Glenn Dunks

For a film about a little-known name of early silent cinema, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché sure does come out of the gates swinging. Swinging and sweeping and swooping and spinning and kicking and ecstatically careening through the streets of Paris. The opening passages of Pamela B. Green’s revelatory documentary are so frenetically paced that it’s almost exhausting. When I posited that none other than Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! was an inspiration, the film’s own Twitter feed confirmed it. Indeed.

And it’s not just the opening, too. The entirety of this film is surprisingly fast-paced, often editing its collage of film clips, archival video, contemporary exploration and talking heads into a dizzying soup of cinematic nostalgia...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDirector John Singleton on the set of his Boyz in the HoodJohn Singleton has died at the age of 51 after suffering a stroke. In an essential overview of the filmmaker's groundbreaking career, K. Austin Collins writes "[Singleton's] black characters were flawed, often failures; his films detailed the extent to which these failures were personal, and made clear when they were systemic. Singleton’s black people were human." I was discovered by a master filmmaker by the name of John Singleton. He not only made me a movie star but made me a filmmaker. There are no words to express how sad I am to lose my brother, friend & mentor. He loved bring the black experience to the world. ..Us at Cannes ‘90 pic.twitter.com/CaRKjZtjgB— Ice Cube (@icecube) April 29, 2019A newly discovered sequel to A Clockwork Orange...

How does someone like Alice Guy-Blaché become forgotten in time? Director Pamela B. Green answers this question while doing her damnedest to rectify the error in the arresting documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché. Narrated by Jodie Foster and featuring interview snippets from a slew of impressive female filmmakers, many learn about Alice Guy for the first time (!) while others express a limited knowledge of her accomplishments.

Born in 1873, young Alice Guy split her young life between Chile and France, eventually becoming a typist to support her family after her father’s death. She would find a solid gig at Gaumont in the 1890s as a secretary, working directly with those who were experimenting with motion pictures. Green highlights that Guy was there at the “surprise” screening at which the Lumière Brothers presented La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory) in 1895. Inspired by all of this,...

There are moments in Pamela B. Green’s “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché,” a documentary on the pioneering filmmaker, where the form and construction of the film feel oppressively didactic, the ideas presented with a trying-too-hard energy as if to appeal to a child or a particularly checked-out student who thinks classic films are those made pre-Y2K.

Director Green and her co-writer Joan Simon are undeniably fighting an uphill battle if their goal is to get younger people interested in a movie about the first woman filmmaker. Perhaps it’s no wonder why they feature faces like Andy Samberg among the myriad interview subjects who become walk-on cameos — “Recognize this person?!” — more than substantial conveyors of information. Despite these misfires, the breadth of detail about not just film and Guy-Blaché’s body of work but also the actual process of how a woman’s work gets erased is jaw-dropping,...

A documentary on the first female multi-hyphenate in cinema’s long history has unveiled its trailer. Pamela B. Green’s Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, narrated by Jodie Foster, is a feature documentary that studies the full scope of the life and work of screenwriter, producer and studio owner Alice Guy-Blaché. The film opens in Los Angeles on April 19 and New York on April 26 via Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber ahead of a nationwide rollout.

The docu features interviews with Patty Jenkins, Diablo Cody, Ben Kingsley, Geena Davis, Ava DuVernay, Andy Samberg, Evan Rachel Wood, Lake Bell and Julie Delpy, among others. The pic played premiered last spring at Cannes, where Deadline’s Pete Hammond raved about it.

Guy-Blaché achieved fame and financial success before being shut out from the industry she helped create. Over the span of her career, she wrote, produced or directed 1,000 films,...

"How could such an important figure in the birth of cinema not be known?" Zeitgeist Films, in association with Kino Lorber, has released an official trailer for the documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Don't know who Alice Guy-Blaché is? That's what this film is all about! Alice Guy-Blaché was, as we now know, the very first female filmmaker. She started out making films in France in the 1890s, then moved to America and started her own production company with her husband. After making over 1000 films during her time, her career came to an end, she was sadly forgotten about, and most of her work was lost. Until recently. Be Natural is not only a doc about Guy-Blaché, but an investigation into what happened, how and why she disappeared from film history, and whether her work can be recovered and preserved now.

Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber announced today that it has acquired North American rights for Pamela B. Green’s documentary, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché.

Narrated by Jodie Foster, the film centers on the life and accomplishments of the world’s first female filmmaker and had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Classics section, and also screened at the Telluride, New York, Deauville, BFI London film festivals. It recently joined the Documentary Feature Oscar race, and after a qualifying run this year will be rolled out in theaters by Zeitgeist in early 2019, followed later in the year by VOD and home video releases via Kino Lorber.

The terrific and enlightening documentary, which I first wrote about for Deadline after seeing its emotional world premiere in Cannes, plays like a detective biopic in tracing the career and legacy of this...

Academy Award Submission for Best Feature Documentary: ‘Be Natural: The Untold Story Of Alice Guy-Blaché’by Peter Belsito and Sydney Levine‘Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché’ deserves much more attention as her real life story was, and still is, a history-changer.

Filmmaker Pamela B. Green’s Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché is a timely, exhilarating rediscovery of a forgotten woman. Guy-Blaché, who made her initial film in 1896 Paris, was not only the first female filmmaker, but one of the first directors to make a narrative film. Be Natural follows her rise from Gaumont secretary to her appointment as head of production at Gaumont a year later, then her career in France and the United States as a writer, director, and/or producer of 1,000 films, both feature-length and shorts, as well as the founder of her own studio. An earlier cut of the film premiered...

A whopping 166 documentary features have been submitted to the academy for consideration at the 2019 Oscars. That is down by four from last year’s record 170 submissions. Among these contenders are all of the highest grossing documentaries of the year including “Free Solo,” “Rbg” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

To winnow the entries down to the 15 semi-finalists that will be announced on December 17, the academy is sending monthly packages of the newly eligible documentary feature screeners to all 400 or so members of the documentary branch. While all members are encouraged to watch as many of these as they can, one-fifth of the voters are assigned each title. In late November, each branch member will submit a preferential ballot listing their top 15 choices.

See 2019 Oscars: Foreign-language film entries from A (Afghanistan) to Y (Yemen)

All of these ballots will be collated to determine the 15 semi-finalists. Branch members will then be...

You may be asking: Why is a man reviewing a documentary about gender inequality in Hollywood? But then you may as well ask: Why did a man direct such a film in the first place?

Representation is an issue that affects all of us, on-screen and off, and while it’s inspirational to see women directors such as Natalie Portman and Maria Giese on the front lines of the 2017 Women’s March — as we do in Tom Donahue’s “This Changes Everything” — there’s something to be said for solidarity shown by those who have nothing to gain from their support beyond the advancement of the greater good. So, like white people at a Black Lives Matter rally or straight folks at a Gay Pride parade, Donahue deserves credit for proactively going out of his way to make a movie that tells it like it is — and paints it as it could be.

The Cannes Film Festival’s Jury President Cate Blanchett and the Camera d’Or Jury President Ursula Meier put on a good front for the festival but still, Competition had only three out of 21 films directed by women while Un Certain Regard had eight out of 18 (44%) and Short Films in Competition had two out of eight (25%). Cinefondation had eight of 17 shorts (47%) by women; Critics’ Week four out of seven (57%) while Critics’ Week Shorts had three out of ten (30%). Directors’ Fortnight had five out of 20 (25%) and Directors’ Fortnight Shorts had four out of 11 (36%).International key women players of the film industry — directors, crew members, actresses, producers, screenwriters, sales agents, distributors, talent agents, editors — climbed the steps of the Cannes Film Festival.

Among them, Cate Blanchett and Agnès Varda read a collective statement.

Of the eight Special Screenings of the festival none was by a woman. Cannes Classics showed six out of 33 (18%) by women.

Festival doc activity included the Marche’s Doc Corner and a buzzy Doc Day that welcomed European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

The Cannes L’Œil d’or (Golden Eye) documentary award has been presented to Stefano Savona’s Samouni Road.

The $5,900 priz is presented by Lascam (the French-speaking authors’ society) and its president, Julie Bertuccelli, in collaboration with the Cannes Film Festival, with the support of Ina (French National Audiovisual Institute) and, new for this year, Audiens.

The jury – headed by director Emmanuel Finkiel – praised the Directors’ Fortnight entry for its “intelligent way of filming, the right distance in its point of view,...

I have seen the most pertinent, timely, touching and inspiring movie in Cannes this year, and for my money the best in the fest. So why do I feel hardly anyone saw it, even if among its executive producers are Robert Redford, Hugh Hefner and John Ptak, and features a who’s who of on-camera participants?

So why is no one talking about it? Try to find a review of it in the trades or anywhere and you will have to search hard. Those critics apparently would rather rush to see the new Lars von Trier or the Gaspar Noe, than give notice to this incredible woman who not only started it all for her gender in movies, but really pioneered it for everyone — man or woman. This film needs to be seen and distributed, and after blowing off the main competition film and attending its one — and only — screening...

World cinema has lost one of its greatest champions — and also one of its most enigmatic characters — with the passing of Pierre Rissient, the inveterate French film publicist, occasional filmmaker, and string-pulling éminence grise of the international festival scene.

Rissient died Saturday in Paris, just days before the start of Cannes, where he was scheduled to unveil a restoration of the 1982 drama “Cinq et la peau,” which debuted 36 years earlier at the festival in Un Certain Regard. And true to his encyclopedic command of film history, he also appears in the Cannes Classics documentary “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché.”

Rissient’s connection to Cannes is long and profound, dating back decades, to his early days (alongside partner-in-crime Bertrand Tavernier) as a film “praiser” — to invoke a cheeky bit of Variety slanguage that, in Rissient’s case, couldn’t be more apt, as he was never less than sincere about his passions.

Orson Welles will indeed be feted in Cannes this year with Mark Cousins dropping by the Croisette with The Eyes of Orson Welles and German helmer Margarethe von Trotta will celebrate Swedish cinema’s gift to the world with the docu Searching for Ingmar Bergman. Pamela B. Green‘s the Kickstarter funded project Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché will be receiving its world premiere and over a dozen of restored classic films will be acknowledged and when lucky with someone who was part of the film or the film process with The Park Circus folks supplying the festival with…...

Orson Welles will be featured at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. It still won’t be via his previously unfinished The Other Side Of The Wind, which recently got caught in the scrum between the festival and Netflix. Rather, Welles will be represented in The Eyes Of Orson Welles, a new documentary from Mark Cousins that’s part of the Cannes Classics selection.

The festival today unveiled its full roster for the Classics sidebar which includes tributes and documentaries about film and filmmakers, and restorations presented by producers, distributors, foundations, cinemathèques and rights holders. Among the attendees this year are Martin Scorsese, Jane Fonda, Christopher Nolan and John Travolta.

The Eyes Of Orson Welles is a journey through the filmmaker’s visual process. Thanks to Welles’ daughter Beatrice, Cousins (The Story Of Film) was granted access to never-before-seen drawings, paintings and early works that form a sketchbook from his life.

Hannah Bonner Mar 8, 2019

Gender equality continues to be an ongoing issue in Hollywood. We examine why that is and who are 26 voices you should look for.

While Green Book winning Best Picture at the 2019 Oscars was a sour surprise for many viewers, and Olivia Colman’s Best Actress win pure sweetness, the Oscars was glaringly predictable in one key area before the red carpet even unfurled. The absence of women directors (again!) in the Best Director and Best Picture category points to the sustained systematic exclusion of females from two of the most acclaimed, and coveted, prizes in Hollywood.

The Hollywood industry hasn’t cottoned much to female directors. How else do we explain that women account for 4.6 percent of directors of major studio films as of 2015? How else do we explain that it wasn’t until 2010 that a woman won an Oscar for Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker...