Who is considered to be the first individual to be a film director and writer of narrative fiction films?

An early 20th century film making pioneer and the first individual considered to have made a narrative fiction film was Alice Guy-Blaché. She made more than 1,000 films and ran her own film studio in the U.S. in the state of New Jersey, where she experimented with sound syncing, color tinting, interracial casting and special effects.

Alice was born in July 1873 in Paris, France and she died in March 1968 in Mahwah, New Jersey at the age of 94. Concerning her professional career, she entered the film business as a secretary at Gaumont-Paris in 1896. Then she went from making cameras to producing movies. She became one of the first film directors in the film industry.

Guy-Blaché impressed her bosses so much with her work output and the quality of her productions that by 1905 she was made production director for her company. While supervising the company's other directors in 1907, she married Herbert Blaché, an Englishman who ran the company's British and German offices.

They made it to the U.S. and set up film production operations. In 1910, she set up her own production company in New York. She also built a studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. After a period of critical and financial success, her company's fortunes declined and she eventually had to shut the business down. In the late 1940s, she was able to write an autobiography about her life and work as a filmmaker and boss.