1882-1942
The woman who has been called the first feminist director Germaine Dulac was born Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider on this day in Amines, France. Her family was an upper middle class family; and her father was a career officer in the French military. As a child, she could not get accustomed to the frequent moves required by the military, so she was sent to live with her grandmother in Paris. After arriving there, she quickly became interested in the arts and studying music. This lead to a keen interest in the theater. As an older teen and young adult and influenced by women's movements of the time in Paris, she became interested in socialism and feminism and settled on a career in journalism. In 1905 she married Marie-Louis Albert-Dulac (hence her surname) and four years later she began writing for the feminist publication La Française; while working as the magazine, she became it's theater critic. She also joined the editorial stuff of La Fronda, a feminist newspaper that was largely regarded as "radical." It was at this time that she avidly pursued an interest in still photography, that naturally morphed into an interest in the moving picture: the year was 1914. Her interest was sparked by her friend, dancer and actress, Stacia Napierkowska (Stacia is the dancer seen in the famous French crime serial Les Vampires). An a pre-war trip to Italy Dulac was with Napierkowska when she was filming and the bug took hold of her. She was determined to start her own film company upon her return to Paris. A lot of the chronology of her films is hard to pen down, but what is absolutely known for sure is that her first film was made in 1915: Les soeurs ennemies. Her next film Venus Victrix (1917) starred her friend Napierkowska. She added screen writing to her listed of accomplishments with Âmes de fous (1918)--it was melodramatic serial that she also directed--it was her first major success. Dulac met director D. W. Griffith in 1921 and wrote about purely on artistic merits alone; avoiding the obvious problems of feminism in his films, she curiously chose to focus instead on two positive artistic elements in his film-making instead. She made the bulk of her films in the 1920's, with many progressing more and more toward the surreal. She ended her time in the directors chair with a series of shorts, bringing sound into her work in 1929 in Arabesque a 5 minute montage short. She also produced two films in the late 1920's, the first of which was L'invitation au voyage (1927), which she also wrote and directed. With the coming of sound, she took to filming newsreel and short documentaries for the likes of Gaumont and Pathé (please visit the Wikipedia page for these titles--IMDb's page on her is woefully lacking in her later work!). The last film that she directed was the 10 minute Le retour à la vie in 1936. After her film career retirement, she then became the president of Fédération des ciné-clubs, an organization that apprenticed and supported young filmmaker. She also taught classes on film. Germaine Dulac died in Paris on the 20th of July in 1942 at the age of just 59. She is interred at the historic Père Lachaise.
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| [Source: CriMa (Find A Grave)] |
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