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A Mysterious Portrait
''A Mysterious Portrait'' (french: Le Portrait mystérieux), also known as ''The Mysterious Portrait'', is an 1899 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 196 in its catalogs, where it is advertised as a ''grande nouveauté photographique extraordinaire''. Summary A magician displays an empty picture frame against a stage backdrop, including posters on the wall. Unrolling this backdrop to reveal another, he places a neutral canvas and a stool inside the picture frame. With a gesture, the magician makes his own image come slowly into focus in the frame. It comes immediately to life, and the magician and his image hold a conversation before the image fades out of focus and disappears again. Production Méliès himself plays the magician in the film. The posters on the wall advertise his own Paris theatre of illusions, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. Effects in the film were created using the substitution ... [...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] |
George Albert Smith (film Pioneer)
George Albert Smith (4 January 1864 – 17 May 1959) was an English stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, inventor and a key member of the loose association of early film pioneers dubbed the Brighton School by French film historian Georges Sadoul. He is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short films from 1897 to 1903, which pioneered film editing and close-ups, and his development of the first successful colour film process, Kinemacolor. Biography Birth and early life Smith was born in Cripplegate, London in 1864. His father Charles Smith was a ticket-writer and artist.Hall (1964), p. 92. He moved with his family to Brighton, where his mother ran a boarding house on Grand Parade, following the death of his father. It was in Brighton in the early 1880s that Smith first came to public attention touring the city's performance halls as a stage hypnotis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1899 Short Films
Events January 1899 * January 1 ** Spanish rule ends in Cuba, concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. ** Queens and Staten Island become administratively part of New York City. * January 2 – **Bolivia sets up a customs office in Puerto Alonso, leading to the Brazilian settlers there to declare the Republic of Acre in a revolt against Bolivian authorities. **The first part of the Jakarta Kota–Anyer Kidul railway on the island of Java is opened between Batavia Zuid ( Jakarta Kota) and Tangerang. * January 3 – Hungarian Prime Minister Dezső Bánffy fights an inconclusive duel with his bitter enemy in parliament, Horánszky Nándor. * January 4 – **U.S. President William McKinley's declaration of December 21, 1898, proclaiming a policy of benevolent assimilation of the Philippines as a United States territory, is announced in Manila by the U.S. commander, General Elwell Otis, and angers independence activists who had fought against S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Films Directed By Georges Méliès
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound and, more rarely, other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it. Recording and transmission of film The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects. Before the introduction of digital production, series of still images were recorded on a strip of chemically sensitized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Black-and-white Films
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Fortnite French places Arts and media * The French (band), a British rock band * "French" (episode), a live-action episode of ''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!'' * ''Française'' (film), 2008 * French Stewart (born 1964), American actor Other uses * French (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) * French (tunic), a particular type of military jacket or tunic used in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union * French's, an American brand of mustard condiment * French catheter scale, a unit of measurement of diameter * French Defence, a chess opening * French kiss, a type of kiss involving the tongue See also * France (other) * Franch, a surname * French ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Silent Short Films
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Fortnite French places Arts and media * The French (band), a British rock band * "French" (episode), a live-action episode of ''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!'' * ''Française'' (film), 2008 * French Stewart (born 1964), American actor Other uses * French (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) * French (tunic), a particular type of military jacket or tunic used in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union * French's, an American brand of mustard condiment * French catheter scale, a unit of measurement of diameter * French Defence, a chess opening * French kiss, a type of kiss involving the tongue See also * France (other) * Franch, a surname * French ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1899 Films
The following is an overview of the events of 1899 in film, including a list of films released and notable births. Events *September **'' King John'', a silent compilation of three short scenes from a forthcoming stage production by Herbert Beerbohm Tree with film direction by William Kennedy Dickson and Walter Pfeffer Dando, is filmed in London, the first known film based on a Shakespeare play. **Mitchell and Kenyon of Blackburn in the north of England release three fiction films under the 'Norden' brand which attract national attention – ''The Tramp's Surprise'', ''The Tramps and the Artist'' and ''Kidnapping by Indians'', the latter being the first Western. *November – The oldest surviving Japanese film, '' Momijigari'', is shot by Tsunekichi Shibata in Tokyo as a record of kabuki actors Onoe Kikugorō V and Ichikawa Danjūrō IX performing a scene from the play '' Momijigari''. *T. C. Hepworth invents Biokam, a 17.5 mm format which also is the first format to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-referential
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philosophy, it also refers to the ability of a subject to speak of or refer to itself, that is, to have the kind of thought expressed by the first person nominative singular pronoun "I" in English. Self-reference is studied and has applications in mathematics, philosophy, computer programming, second-order cybernetics, and linguistics, as well as in humor. Self-referential statements are sometimes paradoxical, and can also be considered recursive. In logic, mathematics and computing In classical philosophy, paradoxes were created by self-referential concepts such as the omnipotence paradox of asking if it was possible for a being to exist so powerful that it could create a stone that it could not lift. The Epimenides paradox, 'All Cretans are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Four Troublesome Heads
''The Four Troublesome Heads'' (french: Un homme de têtes, literally "A Man of Heads"), also known as ''Four Heads Are Better Than One'', is an 1898 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Plot A magician enters the frame and stands between two tables. He removes his own head and puts it on one of the tables, where it starts talking and looking around. The magician repeats the action twice, with a new head appearing on his shoulders each time, until four identical heads are presented at once. The magician then plays a banjo, and all four heads sing along. He then bashes two of the heads with his banjo over their obnoxious singing, making them disappear. He then takes off his head and tosses it aside before taking the other head from the second table, tossing it in the air and it lands back onto his neck. He bows to the viewers, bids them farewell and then strolls off. Production Méliès himself plays the magician in the film, which takes advantage of his sense of r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Spiritualist Photographer
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The One Man Band
''The One Man Band'' (french: L'Homme-Orchestre) is a 1900 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 262–263 in its catalogs. Synopsis On an empty stage, a magician (Méliès) multiplies himself and his chair to form an instrumental band, which he conducts in a lively piece of music. He then returns to each of his identical copies, and a giant ornamental fan appears behind him. Jumping up, the magician disappears in a puff of smoke before returning to the stage for a final bow. Production To create the illusion of seven identical musicians, the film required seven simultaneous multiple exposures; only one other known Méliès film, ''The Melomaniac'', uses so many exposures at once. In addition, the effect required careful coordination in timing and body position between exposures. First, Méliès walked down a line, arranging the seven chairs in a row and sitting in the last one; then, the film was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Urban
Charles Urban (April 15, 1867 – August 29, 1942) was an Anglo-American film producer and distributor, and one of the most significant figures in British cinema before the First World War. He was a pioneer of the documentary, educational, propaganda and scientific film, as well as being the producer of the world's first successful motion picture colour system. Early life Urban was born Carl Urban in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second child (of ten) of Joseph Urban, originally from Ronsberg, Austro-Hungary, and Anna Sophie (née Glatz), from Königsberg, East Prussia. He lost the sight in his left eye aged twelve after a baseball accident. He changed his names to Charles after leaving school in 1882, then worked as a book agent across Ohio, before managing a stationery store in Detroit, Michigan. Career Urban first entered the film industry in 1895 when he exhibited the Kinetoscope in Detroit, Michigan early in 1895. He moved to Britain in August 1897, and became managing director of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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