Cinema
A Trip to the Moon
Le Voyage dans la Lune
Georges Méliès · 1902
Synopsis
Gathered in congress, astronomers listen to Professor Barbenfouillis set out his plan for a voyage to the Moon. A team of scholars takes its place in a shell, which a giant cannon fires towards the heavenly body, and the craft lodges itself in the eye of the Moon. The travellers sleep under the stars, endure a snowfall, descend into a cave where giant mushrooms grow, and there meet the Selenites, the inhabitants of the place, who take them prisoner.
Context
The film was shot in the glass-roofed studio at Montreuil and hand-coloured, frame by frame, in Élisabeth Thuillier's Paris workshop. As soon as it was released, it was widely pirated in the United States. A coloured print, found in 1993 at the Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona, was too damaged to be projected; Lobster Films, the Technicolor Foundation and the Groupama Gan Foundation completed its restoration in 2011, frame by frame, on more than thirteen thousand frames.
Who it is for
A silent short film of a dozen minutes, twelve to fifteen depending on the copy; it exists in black and white and in colour.
Prizes and reception
The restored colour version was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, with new music by the band Air.
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