Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

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In 1911, The Moving Picture News wrote that Alice Guy Blaché, the first female filmmaker in history, was a “fine example of what a woman can do if given a square chance in life.”

Blaché had already founded a successful film company in the United States by the time the article was published, announcing a new studio she was opening in New Jersey. She soon built that studio, adding to her triumphs. Cinema was Blaché’s passion — she called it her Prince Charming — and it took her across continents and centuries in a life shaped both by soaring achievements and by some of the same struggles that women moviemakers face today.

She was aware of her singularity.

“I have produced some of the biggest productions ever released by a motion picture company,” Blaché told the entertainment weekly The New York Clipper in 1912.

She made — directed, produced or supervised (often doing triple duty) — about 1,000 films, many of them short, the standard at the time.