Gaumont Film Company

Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont (1864–1946). Gaumont is the oldest continuously operating film company in the world. Originally dealing in photographic apparatus, the company began producing short films in 1897 to promote its make of camera-projector. Léon Gaumont's secretary Alice Guy-Blaché became the motion picture industry’s first female director. From 1905 to 1914, its studios "Cité Elgé" (from the normal French pronunciation of the founder's initials L-G) at La Villette, France, were the largest in the world. The company manufactured its own equipment and mass-produced films until 1907, when Louis Feuillade became the artistic director of...