I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch
The Cabbage Dairy (La Fée aux Choux) – Alice Guy Blaché
“Alice Guy’s first film, and arguably the world’s first narrative film, was called La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy) in 1896. It is a humorous story of a woman growing children in a cabbage patch. There is speculation surrounding the actual date of the film and different historians have argued about the dating and the labeling of it as ‘the first narrative film’ because of its extremely close release to another catalogued Gaumont film and other narrative-esque films from Méliès.[8]— Wikipedia
Books on Alice Guy Blaché
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