'Sexism stands at the door': 11 female film-makers written out of mainstream Hollywood history

Everything we’re told about cinema is that it’s shaped by men. If women feature at all in many Hollywood histories, it’s to look gorgeous on screen and lead interesting personal lives off it.

But this narrative has been warped, consciously and not, by the men who have dominated film-making for almost a century, ignoring the women who made films, challenged the studio system – and helped bring it down.

The battle for equality on the screen is still being fought. Things are slowly changing for the better – witness Chloé Zhao’s victory at Sunday’s Golden Globes – but it comes too late for generations who have been locked out of Hollywood’s corridors of power. Their stories are still too-little discussed. Here are 11 women whose ill-treatment illustrates Hollywood’s alternative history

Alice Guy-Blaché: the silent era director whose set was chopped up for firewood before she could shoot
As a 22-year-old secretary to French film magnate Léon Gaumont, Alice Guy-Blaché was one of the first people to pick up a camera and make a narrative film, 1896’s The Cabbage Fairy. She soon became Gaumont’s head of production and made hundreds of films, showcasing the company’s experiments with colour and early synchronised sound before high-profile features such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But when her department became profitable in its own right, instead of a mere advertising arm for the company’s products, she faced attempts to replace her and had to appeal to the board (led by Gustave Eiffel) to save her job.