Méliès, du théâtre d'illusion au début du cinéma, Paris

Méliès, du théâtre d'illusion au début du cinéma is a talk at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris on Tuesday 1 December 2026, 18:30. It belongs to the series Mardis de l'histoire de Paris : le divertissement à Paris. The talk covers the history of Georges Méliès, a pioneer and magician of cinema.

Pascal Friaut and Anne-Marie Quévrain take part. In December 1895 Georges Méliès attended the screening of the Lumière brothers' films at the Grand Café de Paris, then took up the cinematograph to create the first special effects of cinema. Georges Méliès also made féeries, historical films, reconstructed newsreels such as the Affaire Dreyfus (1899), and advertising films.

The Voyage dans la lune of 1902 runs about 16 minutes. It drew on Offenbach's opera of the same name and on Jules Verne's novel De la Terre à la Lune (1865). Over 16 years Georges Méliès made close to 520 films, stopped filming in 1913 and stopped running his theatre in 1915.