Georges Méliès's Birthday
Next: December 8, 2026
Cinema's first great magician.
The story
Where it comes from
Georges Méliès was born in Paris on 8 December 1861, and this Story marks his birthday. A gifted stage magician, he bought the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in 1888. In 1895 he saw one of the Lumière brothers' first Paris film shows; the story goes that when they would not sell him their invention, he bought a projector in England and turned it into a camera. Between 1896 and 1912 he made more than 500 films full of magic tricks and painted sets, among them A Trip to the Moon (1902).
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance, but it is a perfect day to watch A Trip to the Moon, which runs about 13 minutes. In Paris, the Cinémathèque française shows his drawings, costumes and machines in its permanent Musée Méliès, opened in 2021. Anyone who makes animation or special effects today is working in a tradition he helped to start.
Did you know
- A Trip to the Moon used 260 metres of film in 30 scenes, and it was copied so widely in the United States that Méliès opened an office there to protect his rights.
- He created the first glass-walled studio designed for filmmaking, at Montreuil, near Paris.
- Of the roughly 500 films he made, about 250 have been found again and are kept at the Cinémathèque française.
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