If anyone on this list is able to attend the NFT event Rethinking French Cinema on Saturday, I'd like to read about it.  
Of particular interest to me are the films of Alice Guy Blache for whom Gaumont Studios were built. She was the world's first narrative filmmaker, as well as the first use close-ups, and the first by decades to make color films and talkies. She invented studio film production as we know it, and made hundreds of popular movies in France and the US, but she is not well-known. I found Abel's book listed in a bibliography about her, and wonder if he is showing her films in his program.

T.A.Brady

PS. Her films The Making of an American Citizen and Algie the Miner (1912) are comedies with immigrant themes which examine the effects of external cultures on interior constructs of gender roles.
(and for those interested in early film history, here is a bio page on Alice Guy Blache
www.suite101.com/article.cfm/movies_and_the_mind/60358)