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.

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.

Eight or so years ago, young film­mak­er Col­in Levy got an oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time. He got a one-on-one meet­ing with Mar­tin Scors­ese. After spend­ing much of his time in high school mak­ing a five-minute short, Levy won the nation­al Youn­gArts award — and, with it, the chance to chat with the guy who direct­ed Good­fel­las, Taxi Dri­ver and Rag­ing Bull.

After get­ting a per­son­al tour of Scorsese’s office and edit­ing bays by none oth­er than leg­endary edi­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er, Levy met the man him­self. “It was a defin­ing moment in my path as a film­mak­er,” he lat­er wrote on his blog.

Mar­tin Scors­ese was intim­i­dat­ing, to say the least. But very jovial, very talk­a­tive, and he took me seri­ous­ly. (Or con­vinced me, at least.) I pret­ty much kept my mouth shut. Every 30 sec­onds he would men­tion an actor, pro­duc­er, direc­tor or film title I had nev­er heard of before. I was stunned just to be in his pres­ence. He liked my film, he said. “How did you do the lit­tle crea­tures?” I tried to explain how I fig­ured out the basics of 3D ani­ma­tion. His eyes lit up and he start­ed talk­ing about the dig­i­tal effects in The Avi­a­tor.

The jux­ta­po­si­tion of scales was over­pow­er­ing. I felt like I was in a movie. Why he spent so much time with me I do not know, but it was amaz­ing just to be in his pres­ence. A few weeks after­wards I labored over a thank-you card, in which I expressed the over­whelm­ing impres­sion I had got­ten that I don’t know enough about any­thing. I spe­cial­ly don’t know enough about film his­to­ry and for­eign cin­e­ma. I asked if he had any sug­ges­tions for where to start.

A cou­ple weeks lat­er, Scorsese’s assis­tant sent him a hand­ful of books and 39 for­eign movies per­son­al­ly picked by the film­mak­er. “Mr. Scors­ese asked that I send this your way,” his assis­tant wrote to Col­in. “This should be a jump start to your film edu­ca­tion!”

Scorsese’s selec­tions – which you can see above – are a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into what influ­enced the film­mak­er. Sev­er­al movies are peren­ni­al film school clas­sics: Ital­ian neo­re­al­ist mas­ter­pieces like the Bicy­cle Thief and Umber­to D pop up on the list along with ground­break­ing French New Wave works like 400 Blows and Breath­less. More unex­pect­ed is sur­pris­ing­ly strong show­ings of both Japan­ese post-war movies and New Ger­man cin­e­ma. Both Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder get three films each. And while there are some rather eccen­tric, unex­pect­ed inclu­sions in the list–Roc­co and his Broth­ers? Il Sor­pas­so? Death by Hang­ing? – there are also some pret­ty strik­ing omis­sions; big name art house fig­ures like Ing­mar Bergman, Robert Bres­son and most sur­pris­ing­ly Fed­eri­co Felli­ni didn’t make the cut. In any case, as Scorsese’s assis­tant writes, this list is a great place to start for any­one look­ing to learn more about for­eign film.

At least the first few films on the list you will find in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Huff­in­g­ton Post

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing: Fea­tures 30 Video Lessons

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ate a List of 38 Essen­tial Films About Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy

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.