Making an American Citizen was made by Alice Guy (1873-1968) in 1912. This young French lady began her career in 1894 alongside Léon Gaumont (1864-1946) who hired her as his secretary while she was just 21 and had no experience in the image industry.  In 1895, after the first screening of the Lumière Brothers, Alice Guy suggested that Léon Gaumont transform the Comptoir Général de la Photographie into a cinematographic company.  Thus the Société des Etablissements Gaumont was born of which Alice Guy became production director.

In 1900, the one her colleagues called “Miss Alice” made her first film, La Fée aux Choux. She then became the first film maker in the history of cinema. Alice Guy was even considered to be the creator of cinematography because she was behind the commercial exploitation of films.

Seven years later Alice Guy married Herbert Blaché (1882-1953), an English cameraman with whom she set off to settle in the United States of America.  The couple founded the Solax Film Company in 1910 in the state of New York. Alice Guy was then the first woman to create a production company.  At this time, she filmed up to ten short films and one feature length film for her company a month as well as for the Film Supply Company that became Mutual, producer of Charlie Chaplin’s (1889-1977) first big films.

Success was such that in 1912 Alice Guy and Herbert Blaché built a new studio in Fort Lee, in New Jersey, a place that quickly became the capital of pre-war American cinema.  It was Metro Goldwyn Mayer that distributed all Alice Guy’s films up until 1918.

But at the dawn of the 1920’s, Hollywood became the nerve centre of the film industry in the United States of America.  In 1922 Alice Guy ended her career after making more than 600 films and returned to France. Her works only reappeared in 1974 during the first Festival International de films de femmes, organised in France.

The more than original soundtrack is by Igor Bolender and Vincent Costi, ordered by Le Thécif in 1994.