IAI Academy Now Offers Free Courses: From “The Meaning of Life” to “A Brief Guide to Everything”

in Online Courses | October 17th, 2014

iai academy

This month, The Insti­tute of Art and Ideas (IAI), an orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing “a pro­gres­sive and vibrant intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture in the UK,” launched IAI Acad­e­my — a new online edu­ca­tion­al plat­form that fea­tures cours­es in phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence and pol­i­tics. The ini­tial line­up includes 12 cours­es cov­er­ing every­thing from the­o­ret­i­cal physics, the mean­ing of life, the future of fem­i­nism, the often vexed rela­tion­ship between sci­ence and reli­gion, and more.

IAI Acad­e­my offers its cours­es for free. But, like oth­er course providers, they charge a nom­i­nal fee (right now about $25) if you would like a Ver­i­fied Cer­tifi­cate when you’ve suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a course. Here’s the ini­tial line­up:

  • A Brief Guide to Every­thing — Web Video — John Ellis, King’s Col­lege Lon­don, CBE 
  • The Mean­ing of Life — Web Video — Steve Fuller, Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick
  • New Adven­tures in Space­time — Web Video — Eleanor Knox, King’s Col­lege Lon­don
  • Minds, Moral­i­ty and Agency — Web Video — Mark Row­lands, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
  • Nine Myths About Schiz­o­phre­nia — Web Video — Richard Ben­tall, Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool
  • The His­to­ry of Fear — Web Video — Frank Fure­di, Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent
  • Physics: What We Still Don’t Know — Web Video — David Tong, Cam­bridge
  • Sci­ence vs. Reli­gion — Web Video — Mark Ver­non, Journalist/Philosopher
  • Sex­u­al­i­ty and Pow­er — Web Video — Veronique Mot­ti­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lau­sanne
  • The Infi­nite Quest — Web Video — Peter Cameron, Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.
  • End of Equal­i­ty — Web Video — Beat­rix Camp­bell — Writer/Activist
  • Rethink­ing Fem­i­nism — Web Video — Finn Mack­ay — Fem­i­nist Activist & Researcher

    • For more ever­green cours­es that you can down­load and enjoy when­ev­er you want, don’t miss our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

    For MOOCs being pro­vid­ed in real-time, see our list of MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

    Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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    The C.I.A.‘s “Bestiary of Intelligence Writing” Satirizes Spook Jargon with Maurice Sendak-Style Drawings

    in Comedy, Creativity, English Language, History | October 17th, 2014

    CIA 1

    Ten years in acad­e­mia gave me a healthy dis­like of clichéd jar­gon, as well as an appre­ci­a­tion for jokes about it. There are a few, like the aca­d­e­m­ic sen­tence gen­er­a­tor and Ph.D. Comics, that cap­ture a bit of what it’s like to go to school and work in high­er ed. Cor­po­rate drones, of course, have Office Space and Dil­bert. But what about the spooks, those name­less, face­less agents who work tire­less­ly away in the base­ment of Lan­g­ley, doing who knows what to whom? Where does the C.I.A. go to laugh at its pecu­liar brand of hack­neyed dou­ble­s­peak? Not that we were sup­posed to know this, but per­haps many of them turn to an arti­cle called “the Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” in a 1982 copy of inter­nal agency newslet­ter Stud­ies in Intel­li­gence.

    CIA 2

    Medi­um describes this odd piece as a “zoo of fic­tion­al fau­na,” and like that strange lit­er­ary form, the medieval Euro­pean bes­tiary (often a source of satire and cri­tique), this 17-page arti­cle, with foot­notes, sin­gles out the most offen­sive spook buzz­words as though they were car­di­nal sins—naming 15 mem­bers of “the Col­lec­tion” in all, each one rep­re­sent­ed by its own Mau­rice Sendak-like pen­cil-drawn beast and a descrip­tion of its habits. The two-head­ed beast at the top, Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Analy­sis, is a “hybrid—the fruit of the casu­al mat­ing of stan­dard forms of Analy­sis.” Just above, we have Height­ened Ten­sions, “the adult form of Con­ven­tion­al Tensions—Tensions that have acquired stilts by thriv­ing on a rich diet of pover­ty, mal­nu­tri­tion and espe­cial­ly alien­ation.” Sounds like rough work, this spy game….

    CIA 3

    Most of the beasts are cud­dly enough, some mis­chie­vous, some per­haps dead­ly. Above, we have Dire Straits and below, Para­me­ters. “The Agency author and artist detailed 15 mon­sters in all—complete with illus­tra­tions,” writes Medi­um, “Both of their names are redact­ed in the doc­u­ment. We’ll nev­er know just which CIA agents turned their hand towards snarky polit­i­cal satire.” The doc­u­ment comes to us via a cache of records declas­si­fied in a law­suit filed by for­mer agency employ­ee Jef­fry Scud­der. We do know that the two anony­mous lam­poon­ists were inspired by A Polit­i­cal Bes­tiary, book by James Kil­patrick, car­toon­ist Jeff Mac­Nel­ly, and for­mer sen­a­tor and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Eugene McCarthy. See the full, bone dry arti­cle here, and think about the work talk that might dri­ve you to such cre­ative extremes.

    CIA 4

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spy

    How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

    How the CIA Turned Doc­tor Zhiva­go into a Pro­pa­gan­da Weapon Against the Sovi­et Union

    Declas­si­fied CIA Doc­u­ment Reveals That Ben Franklin (and His Big Ego) Put U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty at Risk

    Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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    The Student of Prague: The Very First Independent Film (1913)

    in Film | October 17th, 2014

    When peo­ple talk about “inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma” today, they seem, as often as not, to talk about a sen­si­bil­i­ty — we all know, on some lev­el, what some­one means when they tell us they “like indie films.” But the term has its roots, of course, not nec­es­sar­i­ly in inde­pen­dence of spir­it, but in inde­pen­dence from sys­tems. Now that tech­nol­o­gy has grant­ed all of us the abil­i­ty, at least in the­o­ry, to make any movie we want, this dis­tinc­tion has lost some of its mean­ing, but between about twen­ty and eighty years ago, the com­mer­cial estab­lish­ments con­trol­ling pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and screen­ing enjoyed their great­est solid­i­ty (and indeed, impen­e­tra­bil­i­ty). Dur­ing that time, mak­ing a film inde­pen­dent­ly meant mak­ing a fair­ly spe­cif­ic, often anti-Hol­ly­wood state­ment. But what about before then, when the medi­um of cin­e­ma itself had yet to take its full shape?

    Not only does 1913’s The Stu­dent of Prague offer an enter­tain­ing exam­ple of inde­pen­dent film from an era before even Hol­ly­wood had become Hol­ly­wood, it has a place in his­to­ry as the first inde­pen­dent film ever released. Ger­man writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and Dan­ish direc­tor Stel­lan Rye (not to men­tion star Paul Wegen­er, he of the Golem tril­o­gy) col­lab­o­rat­ed to bring to ear­ly cin­e­mat­ic life this 19th-cen­tu­ry hor­ror sto­ry of the tit­u­lar stu­dent, a down-at-the-heels bon vivant who, besot­ted with a count­ess and deter­mined to win her by any means nec­es­sary, makes a deal with a dev­il­ish sor­cer­er that will ful­fill his every desire. The catch? He sum­mons the stu­den­t’s reflec­tion out of the mir­ror and into real­i­ty. So empow­ered, this dop­pel­gänger goes around wreak­ing hav­oc. Hard­ly the osten­si­bly high-mind­ed mate­r­i­al of “indie film” — let alone “for­eign film” — from the past half-cen­tu­ry or so, but The Stu­dent of Prague treats it with respect, arriv­ing at the kind of uncom­pro­mis­ing end­ing that might sur­prise even mod­ern audi­ences. If you don’t watch it today, keep it book­marked for Hal­loween view­ing.

    You can find The Stu­dent of Prague added to our big film col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    Watch the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem, with a Sound­track by The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis

    Watch Häx­an, the Clas­sic Cin­e­mat­ic Study of Witch­craft Nar­rat­ed by William S. Bur­roughs (1922)

    Watch the Quin­tes­sen­tial Vam­pire Film Nos­fer­atu Free Online as Hal­loween Approach­es

    Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis: Uncut & Restored

    The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

    Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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    6 Hours of Mannequins Flying From Newark to San Francisco

    in Random | October 16th, 2014

    Is there any­thing worse than fly­ing from Newark to San Fran­cis­co? Maybe it’s watch­ing man­nequins tak­ing this cross-coun­try flight. Talk about tedi­um. And yet there’s some­thing a lit­tle bril­liant about this six hour adver­tise­ment from Vir­gin Air­lines — which promis­es a more inspir­ing flight. I mean how many six hour adver­tise­ments have you seen, let alone ones that have “action” from start to fin­ish? Some­where, some­one’s going to watch this thing all the way through. Maybe it’s you.

    If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

    If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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    Professor Michael Stipe: R.E.M.‘s Frontman Now Teaching Art Classes at NYU

    in Art, Music | October 16th, 2014

     

    stipe at nyu

    Admir­ers of Michael Stipe will know that he before he became a famous rock star with R.E.M., he was an art stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia. He may have skipped the degree, but he nev­er stopped mak­ing things, includ­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy and design of the band’s album cov­ers, the light­ing and stage design of their live shows, and sev­er­al of their videos. Now a rock star emer­i­tus, Stipe makes things full time in an offi­cial capac­i­ty as the vis­it­ing artist and schol­ar in res­i­dence at the NYU Stein­hardt Depart­ment of Art. He has recent­ly curat­ed an “evolv­ing exhi­bi­tion project” called NEW SIGHTS, NEW NOISE, writes Eric Alper, “pro­duced col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Jonathan Berg­er” and includ­ing “con­tri­bu­tions from spe­cial guests Dou­glas Cou­p­land, Jef­fer­son Hack, Peach­es,” and oth­ers.

    Appear­ing at NYU’s 80 WSE Gallery, the exhi­bi­tion also includes work from Stipe’s stu­dents. That’s right, Michael Stipe is a “shiny hap­py” col­lege pro­fes­sor, as this pun-hap­py Spin arti­cle tells us, and the show comes from his class assign­ments: “Each week, Stipe and a dif­fer­ent spe­cial guest will give the class’ 18 stu­dents a prompt, and they’ll respond with ‘100 images and gifs, both found and made, all of which will be uploaded to a pri­vate class web­site.’” It’s all cen­tered around themes Stipe has pur­sued for some time, as you can see from his Tum­blr. He describes the project on R.E.M.’s web­site as refer­ring to “the glut and onslaught of infor­ma­tion made avail­able by the inter­net, often with­out con­text or author­ship; the dis­pro­por­tion­ate and impul­sive reac­tions that it pro­vokes, and the reck­less cyn­i­cism of a 24 hour news cycle.” Read much more about the project at Alper’s blog, and see much more of Stipe’s work—with sculp­ture, paint­ing, and film—at the Creator’s Project video above from 2011.

    pho­to by David Shankbone.

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

    Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

    R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

    Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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    Night on Bald Mountain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pinscreen Animation Based on Mussorgsky’s Masterpiece (1933)

    in Animation, Music | October 16th, 2014

    If you read Open Cul­ture reg­u­lar­ly, I imag­ine I can safe­ly call Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er your favorite France-based, Russ­ian-Amer­i­can hus­band-wife pin­screen ani­ma­tion team. Dare I pre­sume to refer to them as your favorite pin­screen ani­ma­tors, peri­od? We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured two exam­ples of their time- and labor-devour­ing but utter­ly dis­tinc­tive ani­ma­tion tech­nique: their eerie open­ing to Orson Welles’ adap­ta­tion of Kafka’s The Tri­al, and their own daz­zling adap­ta­tion of Gogol’s short sto­ry “The Nose.” Alex­eieff and Park­er’s trip to the Gogol well reflects their pen­chant for the imag­i­na­tive cre­ators of Alex­eief­f’s home­land. The film we present here draws its inspi­ra­tion not from a Russ­ian writer, but from the Russ­ian com­pos­er Mod­est Mus­sorgsky, him­self an enthu­si­as­tic incor­po­ra­tor of his coun­try’s lore and tra­di­tions.

    You cer­tain­ly know at least one work of Mus­sorgsky’s: Night on Bald Moun­tain, which he wrote ear­ly in his career but which nev­er saw a full orches­tral debut until 1886, five years after his death. Over half a cen­tu­ry after that, the piece found a much wider audi­ence through its use in Walt Dis­ney’s Fan­ta­sia. For many, that inter­sec­tion of Mus­sorgsky and Mick­ey Mouse will remain the finest exam­ple of clas­si­cal music unit­ed with ani­ma­tion, but have a look at how Alex­eieff and Park­er did it — in 1933, no less, sev­en years before Fan­ta­sia — and see what Car­toon Research’s Steve Stanch­field calls “one of the most unusu­al and unique look­ing ani­mat­ed films ever cre­at­ed.” It presents, he writes, “both delight­ful and at times hor­ri­fy­ing imagery, a stream of con­scious­ness bar­rage of images that chal­lenge the view­er to com­pre­hend both their mean­ing and the mys­tery of how they were cre­at­ed.”

    To my four-year-old self, Fan­ta­sia seemed pret­ty scary too, but Alex­eieff and Park­er have, on their pin­screen, tak­en things to a whole oth­er psy­cho­log­i­cal lev­el. Near­ly forty years lat­er, they would use the music of Mussko­r­gy again to cre­ate 1972’s French-lan­guage Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion. They would make anoth­er, Trois Themes, in 1980, but it appears lost to time, at least for the moment. Have we made you into the kind of pin­screen ani­ma­tion enthu­si­ast who might unearth it? You can view their pin­screen ani­ma­tion of Night on Bald Moun­tain on YouTube.

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

    Kafka’s Para­ble “Before the Law” Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles & Illus­trat­ed with Great Pin­screen Art

    Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

    Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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    Breaking Bad Illustrated by Gonzo Artist Ralph Steadman

    in Art, Television | October 16th, 2014

    steadmanwalterwhiteslkj1

    Sure, I suf­fered from Break­ing Bad with­draw­al syn­drome after the show’s excel­lent fifth and final sea­son. Symp­toms includ­ed watch­ing episodes of Metás­ta­sis, the Colom­bian telen­ov­ela-style, Span­ish lan­guage remake; obses­sive­ly read­ing news about upcom­ing spin-off, Bet­ter Call Saul; and wish­ing the hoax about a Sea­son 6 was true. The con­di­tion is wide­spread, shared by fans of oth­er cult hits like Dex­ter and The Wire. Many take to the alter­nate uni­vers­es of fan fic­tion and art, and who can blame them? We become as engrossed in the lives of tele­vi­sion char­ac­ters as we do mem­bers of our own fam­i­ly, though I feel for you if your fam­i­ly is as dys­func­tion­al as Wal­ter White’s.

    jessepinkmanralphsteadmansldkjf

    The unlike­ly drug king­pin from sub­ur­ban Albu­querque appealed to us, I think, because he seemed so non­de­script , so painful­ly ordinary—a domes­ti­cat­ed every­man, until des­per­a­tion and hubris turned him into the feared and respect­ed Heisen­berg. No small amount of wish ful­fill­ment for audi­ences there. Break­ing Bad’s world of hyper­vi­o­lence and insan­i­ty resem­bles the dan­ger­ous real world of des­per­a­does, sleazy oppor­tunists, and mer­ce­nar­ies that Hunter S. Thomp­son fear­less­ly doc­u­ment­ed, and so it makes per­fect sense that Thomp­son illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man would be cho­sen to draw six cov­ers for an upcom­ing release of all five sea­sons of the show on Blu-ray (the last sea­son is bro­ken in two, the way it was broad­cast). At the top of the post, see Steadman’s glow­er­ing ren­di­tion of Walt/Heisenberg him­self. Just above, see a dazed and con­fused Jesse Pinkman, and below, the blast­ed vis­age of their sup­pli­er turned arch-ene­my, Gus Fring. (The com­pli­cat­ed, and baf­fling­ly much-despised Skyler does not get her own cov­er.)

    guschickenmanfringlkjsdf

    Steadman’s illus­tra­tions for Thompson’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, a “sur­re­al drug-fueled road trip” of a book, pre­fig­ure the law­less lim­i­nal spaces of Break­ing Bad’s sur­re­al desert land­scapes (remem­ber the tur­tle?). His ren­der­ings of a crazed Thomp­son on his “sav­age jour­ney to the heart of the Amer­i­can dream” per­haps even inspired the dan­ger­ous­ly unhinged jour­ney Walt and Jesse take togeth­er. Com­ing in Feb­ru­ary, the Stead­man-illus­trat­ed Blu-ray col­lec­tion is a lim­it­ed edi­tion and will, Dan­ger­ous Minds informs us, “be sold exclu­sive­ly by Zavvi.com ($30 bucks each). Pre-order is going on now but be fore­warned, the Gus “The Chick­en Man” Fring edi­tion for sea­son four (as well as Mike Ehrmantraut’s sea­son five and Hank Schrader’s show finale sea­son) have already sold-out.” Lots of Break­ing Bad addicts out there, des­per­ate for a fix. If you’re one of them, act fast, though it’s like­ly Stead­man will even­tu­al­ly offer prints for sale (and maybe mugs and t‑shirts, too) on his web­site. See the oth­er three cov­ers over at Dan­ger­ous Minds.

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

    The Sci­ence of Break­ing Bad: Pro­fes­sor Don­na Nel­son Explains How the Show Gets it Right

    Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias” in Omi­nous Teas­er for Break­ing Bad’s Last Sea­son

    How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

    Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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    The Films of Alice Guy-Blaché: The First Female Director & the Cinematic Trailblazer

    in Film | October 16th, 2014

    Alice Guy-Blaché  (1873 –1968) is the great trail­blaz­er of ear­ly cin­e­ma you prob­a­bly nev­er heard of. She was film’s first female direc­tor. She made one of the first nar­ra­tive movies ever at age 23. She wrote, direct­ed and pro­duced over 700 films. And she remains the only woman ever to build and run a movie stu­dio. Even more remark­ably, she did all of this before she had the legal right to vote, and when con­ven­tion dic­tat­ed that she wear a corset. Yet Alice Guy-Blaché‘s name doesn’t appear along­side oth­er cin­e­mat­ic pio­neers like George Méliès, Edwin S. Porter and D.W. Grif­fith in film school his­to­ry books. Some­how, she has fall­en out of the canon of great ear­ly film­mak­ers.


    For­tu­nate­ly, there’s a move­ment to cor­rect this griev­ous error. In 2009, the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art pro­grammed a rare screen­ing of 80 of her works. After a long cam­paign, the Direc­tors Guild of Amer­i­ca award­ed Guy-Blaché with a Life­time Achieve­ment Award. And most recent­ly, film­mak­ers Pamela Green and Jarik van Slui­js raised over $200,000 on Kick­starter for their upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary on Guy-Blaché called Be Nat­ur­al, which is being exec­u­tive pro­duced by Robert Red­ford and nar­rat­ed by Jodie Fos­ter. See a trail­er for the film below.

    Born in 1873 in Paris to a book­seller, Alice Guy found work in 1894 as a sec­re­tary for Leon Gau­mont, a still pho­tog­ra­ph­er who found­ed one of the first movie stu­dios. Guy was imme­di­ate­ly tak­en with the pos­si­bil­i­ties of film and asked her boss if she could exper­i­ment with their brand new movie cam­era. Her first film was The Cab­bage Fairy (top), which shows a woman pluck­ing infants from a cab­bage patch in a sin­gle, unmov­ing shot. To a mod­ern eye, The Cab­bage Fairy might seem mere­ly like a cute film that nice­ly cap­tures Vic­to­ri­an whim­sy. But this film was made in 1896, one year after the Lumière Broth­ers screened the first films ever made. In 1896, the Lumières were still mak­ing their Actu­al­ités – doc­u­men­taries in their most basic form. Their most famous film was sim­ply of a train roar­ing into the sta­tion. Guy’s film, by con­trast, looks strik­ing­ly orig­i­nal.

    Ten years lat­er, she direct­ed the big-bud­get film The Birth, Life and Death of Christ for Gau­mont Stu­dios. It was one of the first bible epics made for the sil­ver screen, requir­ing over 300 extras. You can watch it above.

    By 1907, Guy mar­ried cam­era­man Her­bert Blaché and soon moved to New York. The film­mak­er, now called Alice Guy-Blaché, found­ed The Solax Com­pa­ny with her hus­band in Fort Lee, New Jer­sey. There she con­tin­ued to make ground­break­ing movies. A Fool and his Mon­ey (1912), for instance, is the first movie ever with an all African-Amer­i­can cast. It was made three years before D. W. Grif­fith direct­ed his cin­e­mat­ic landmark/racist embar­rass­ment The Birth of a Nation.

    True to film indus­try con­ven­tion, her hus­band left her for an actress in the ear­ly 1920s.  Soon there­after Solax fold­ed and Guy-Blaché returned to France. She nev­er made anoth­er movie. In 1953, she was award­ed the Légion d’hon­neur by the French gov­ern­ment but, by then, most of her movies had been lost and her rep­u­ta­tion as an ear­ly cin­e­mat­ic inno­va­tor was large­ly for­got­ten by the pub­lic.

    Guy-Blaché’s films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    40 Great Film­mak­ers Go Old School, Shoot Short Films with 100 Year Old Cam­era

    What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

    A Trip to the Moon (and Five Oth­er Free Films) by Georges Méliès, the Father of Spe­cial Effects

    Watch The Hitch-Hik­er by Ida Lupino (the Only Female Direc­tor of a 1950s Noir Film)

    Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.