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The Lilliputian Minuet
''The Lilliputian Minuet'' (french: Le Menuet lilliputien) was a 1905 French short silent film by Georges Méliès. The film, of which only fragments are known to survive, featured Méliès as a magician making playing-card figures come to life in miniature. Plot A magician transforms a marble statue into a living woman, who acts as his assistant. She puts a pack of playing cards in a glass box; four cards (the king of spades, the queen of hearts, the queen of clubs, and the king of diamonds) jump out of the pack into the magician's hands. When the magician puts the four cards on a platform, the kings and queens depicted on them come to life as tiny people, and dance a minuet. Then the kings and queens return to their places on the cards. The magician takes up the cards and makes them disappear, and he and his assistant take a bow. Production Méliès is the magician in the film, which reuses props and costumes from '' The Living Playing Cards'', a film he had made earlier in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Méliès
Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès (; ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French illusionist, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès was well known for the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards. His films include '' A Trip to the Moon'' (1902) and ''The Impossible Voyage'' (1904), both involving strange, surreal journeys somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. The 2011 film ''Hugo'' was inspired by the life and work of Méliès. Early life and education Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès was born 8 December 1861 in Paris, son of Jean-Louis Méliès and his Dutch wife, Johannah-Catherine Schuering. His father h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star Film Company
The Manufacture de films pour cinématographes, often known as Star Film, was a French film production company run by the illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. History On 28 December 1895, Méliès attended the celebrated first public demonstration of the Lumière Brothers' Kinetoscope. The event, held in a room at 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris with one hundred chairs and an entry price of 1, demonstrated the practicality of film cameras and projectors. According to later recollections by Méliès, he immediately approached Antoine Lumière and offered to buy a Lumière projector for his own experimentation; Lumière refused. Méliès went on to make repeated offers, all similarly turned down. Méliès next turned to the British film experimenter Robert W. Paul, and in February 1896, obtained an Animatographe projector for 1,000, along with a collection of short films, some by Paul and some by Edison Studios. Méliès projected these for the first time at his t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Film
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". In the United States, short films were generally termed short subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35 mm reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels. "Short" was an abbreviation for either term. The increasingly rare industry term "short subject" carries more of an assumption that the film is shown as part of a presentation along with a feature film. Short films are often screened at local, national, or international film festivals and made by independent filmmakers with either a low budget or no budget at all. They are usually funded by film grants, nonprofit organizations, sponsor, or personal funds. Short films are generally used for industry experience and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent Film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of title cards. The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era that existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist, theater organist—or even, in large cities, a small orchestra—would often play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music, or improvisation. Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playing Cards
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. They are most commonly used for playing card games, and are also used in magic tricks, cardistry, card throwing, and card houses; cards may also be collected. Some patterns of Tarot playing card are also used for divination, although bespoke cards for this use are more common. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling, and usually are sold together in a set as a deck of cards or pack of cards. The most common type of playing card in the West is the French-suited, standard 52-card pack, of which the most widespread design is the English pattern, followed by the Belgian-Genoese pattern. However, many countries use other, traditional types of playing card, including those that are German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Living Playing Cards
''The Living Playing Cards'' (french: Les Cartes vivantes) is a 1905 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Synopsis A magician enters a stage set on which a large white screen has been placed. Taking a deck of playing cards, he shows one to the camera, makes it grow larger, and finally throws it upon the screen, creating a gigantic reproduction of the card. He does the same with two face cards, a queen and king, each of which comes to life and steps out of the card. The king chases the magician off the stage, before ripping off his disguise to reveal the magician himself. Production The film is based on a stage magic act performed at Méliès's theatre of illusions, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris. In the stage version, the magician was Gaston Velle, who would himself later become a director of Méliès-like trick films for Pathé Frères. In the film version, Méliès himself plays the magician. The special effects used are substitution splice Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hilarious Posters
''The Hilarious Posters'' (french: Les Affiches en goguette) is a 1906 French short silent film by Georges Méliès. It was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 821–823 in its catalogues. Plot On a large canvas-and-wood billboard, a man glues a poster showing two stars of ''L'Amour à crédit'', a show at the Parisiana music hall. It is surrounded by posters showing other figures, advertising various products: Poirot meat extract, Tripaulin paint, Nouveau Dépôt porcelain, Poudre de Fées face powder, Quinquina au Cacao liqueur, Trouillottine lamps, and Mignon corsets. The man leaves, and two gendarmes pass by. As soon as the coast is clear, the people shown in the posters begin coming to life. The two Parisiana stars leave their poster entirely and walk around, busily talking to the residents of the other posters. A fracas breaks out when one of the stars begins flirting with the corset model, and the porcelain vendor drops his wares onto the ground. The figur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Substitution Splice
The substitution splice or stop trick is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining the same framing and other aspects of the scene in both shots. The effect is usually polished by careful editing to establish a seamless cut and optimal moment of change. It has also been referred to as stop motion substitution or stop-action. The pioneering French filmmaker Georges Méliès claimed to have accidentally developed the stop trick, as he wrote in ''Les Vues Cinématographiques'' in 1907 (translated from French): According to the film scholar Jacques Deslandes, it is more likely that Méliès discovered the trick by carefully examining a print of the Edison Manufacturing Company's 1895 film ''The Execution of Mary Stuart'', in which a primitive version of the trick appears. In any case, the substitution splice was both the fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multiple Exposure
In photography and cinematography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image, and double exposure has a corresponding meaning in respect of two images. The exposure values may or may not be identical to each other. Overview Ordinarily, cameras have a sensitivity to light that is a function of time. For example, a one-second exposure is an exposure in which the camera image is equally responsive to light over the exposure time of one second. The criterion for determining that something is a double exposure is that the sensitivity goes up and then back down. The simplest example of a multiple exposure is a double exposure without flash, i.e. two partial exposures are made and then combined into one complete exposure. Some single exposures, such as "flash and blur" use a combination of electronic flash and ambient exposure. This effect can be approximated by a Dirac delta measure (flash) and a constant finite rectangular window, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Filmoteca Española
The Filmoteca Española (Spanish Cinemathèque) is an official institution of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Its objective is to restore, investigate and conserve the film heritage of Spain and its diffusion. Sites Its cinema where films are daily shown is Cine Doré (filmed by Pedro Almodóvar in ''Hable con ella''), in Santa Isabel Street, Madrid, designed by architect Críspulo Moro Cabeza and built in 1923. It was restored from 1982 to 1990. The archive, offices, library and exhibition halls are set in a restored palace on Magdalena St nº 10 in Madrid. Filmoteca has two other venues, the CCR (Conservation and Restoration Center) in Pozuelo de Alarcón, on the outskirts of Madrid and the administrative headquarters in the Palacio de Perales in the center of the city of Madrid. Direction At present the director of Filmoteca is Josetxu Cerdan, professor of Audiovisuals at UC3M. Film collection The total of existing titles in the archives of the Filmoteca Española c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Shepard (film Preservationist)
David Haspel Shepard (October 22, 1940 – January 31, 2017)Grimes, William (February 5, 2017).. ''New York Times''. Retrieved 2017-02-08. was a film preservationist whose company, Film Preservation Associates, is responsible for many high-quality video versions of silent films. Some come from the Blackhawk Films library (owned by Shepard) and others from materials owned by private collectors and film archives around the world. Biography Shepard was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Marjorie (née Haspel) and Bertram Shepard. His father was an executive with the Grand Union grocery-store chain, and his mother a homemaker. When he was 11 years old his family moved to Tenafly, New Jersey. As a teenager he filmed school football games for the coaches to study, and in the off-season began to make his own films with student actors. He graduated from Hamilton College, in Upstate New York, in 1962, with a BA in philosophy, and completed a master's degree from the A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lost Film
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress. Conditions During most of the 20th century, U.S. copyright law required at least one copy of every American film to be deposited at the Library of Congress at the time of copyright registration, but the Librarian of Congress was not required to retain those copies: "Under the provisions of the act of March 4, 1909, authority is granted for the return to the claimant of copyright of such copyright deposits as are not required by the Library." A report created by Library of Congress film historian and archivist David Pierce claims: * 75% of original silent-era films have perished. * 14% of the 10,919 silent films released by major studios exist in their original 35 mm or other formats. * 11% survive only in full-length foreign versions or film formats of lesser image quality. Of the American sound films made from 1927 to 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
