Invaluable assistance has been provided by Hervé Devoulon, General Manager of the Alliance Française de Sydney.
The Festival acknowledges the support for this session of Abbey's Language Book Centre: Australia's lar
gest range of resources for learning and reading other languages, foreign fiction, DVDs and children's products.
Tickets: $25/$15 concession
Film: digital presentation of restored film
Duration: 95 minutes
Live music: accompanist Mauro Colombis
The Festival acknowledges the generous assistance of the inestimable David Shepard and Blackhawk Films in the presentation of these films.
Presenter: Ruth Hessey
Ruth has worked all sides of the camera and currently broadcasts each week on Radio National's MovieTime. She has reviewed and interviewed for all of Australia's major media outlets (ABC, SMH, The Age, Rolling Stone, etc), and is the former host of pay TV's World Movies. She has made two short documentaries and has a television series and a feature in development with Goalpost Pictures. Ruth has been on numerous film festival jury panels (Flickerfest International Short Film Festival, Brisbane International Film Festival, and more), and has acted extensively for stage and screen. She is currently finishing a novel set in 1930s Sydney.
A very special treat concludes the Festival and will remain vivid in viewers’ minds for a long time. The fascinating and extraordinary films by French cinema pioneer, Georges Méliès will entertain, amuse and enchant everyone. It will also surprise many to s
ee special effects used in motion pictures as early as 1896!
With a background as a stage magician, Méliès immediately saw the possibilities of using the new technology of moving pictures, successfully experimenting with multiple exposures, time-lapse photograp
hy, dissolves and other effects to re-create his magical stage shows on film, as well as expanding into other genres.
Although these early films average only a few minutes in length and do not tell a story, they entertain with their unexpectednes
s, unpredictability, charming old-world painted backdrops and sets, and simply the wonder of trickery and the magic of moving pictures – enthralling today as it was over a century ago!
The one-hour session presented by the Festival is divided into four segments: Discovery of Cinema, highlighting three very short films from the year 1896 – the very birth of cinema! Magical Movies features
The session ends with Impossible Voyages featuring two lengthier films of a Sci-Fi Fantasy genre in the style
of Jules Verne, namely The Eclipse (1907) and Conquest of the Pole (1912)
.
This session presents a select choice of some of his best-known films and also rarely-seen ones, and they are important to the serious cinema enthusiast as well as simply enjoyable entertainment for the general public.
Georges Méliès – First Wizard of Cinema
| Méliès' Discovery of Cinema | Duration (minutes) | |
| Card Party | 1896 | 1:00 |
| The Vanishing Lady | 1896 | 1:15 |
| A Nightmare | 1896 | 1:00 |
| This segment | 3:15 | |
| Méliès' Magical Movies | ||
| The One-Man Band | 1900 | 1:30 |
| The Triple Conjurer and the Living Head | 1900 | 1:15 |
| Excelsior! The Prince of Magicians | 1901 | 2:00 |
| The Devil and the Statue | 1901 | 2:00 |
| Gulliver's Travels Among the Lilliputians | 1902 | 4:00 |
| The Kingdom of Fairies | 1903 | 16:30 |
| This segment | 27:15 | |
| Mischievous Méliès | ||
| Cakewalk Infernal | 1903 | 5:30 |
| Jupiter's Thunderballs | 1903 | 3:30 |
| The Cook in Trouble | 1904 | 4:30 |
| The Black Imp | 1905 | 4:00 |
| A Crazy Composer | 1905 | 4:30 |
| This segment | 22:00 | |
| Impossible Voyages | ||
| The Eclipse | 1907 | 9:15 |
| Conquest of the Pole | 1912 | 30:30 |
| This segment | 39:45 | |
| Total | 92:15 |