''A Lightning Sketch'' (french: Dessinateur) was a series of four 1896 French short

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, 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) ...

s directed by Georges Méliès and released by his Star Film Company. Each film showed an artist—very probably Méliès himself—drawing a caricature of a notable political figure in less than a minute. Three similar films were also made at about the same time, in August 1896, by the Anglo-American filmmaker

J. Stuart Blackton James Stuart Blackton (January 5, 1875 – August 13, 1941) was a British-American film producer and director of the silent era. One of the pioneers of motion pictures, he founded Vitagraph Studios in 1897. He was one of the first filmmakers to ...

, as a series called ''Blackton Sketches''; Blackton would later make another film in the same vein, ''

The Enchanted Drawing ''The Enchanted Drawing'' is a 1900 silent film directed by J. Stuart Blackton. It is best known for containing the first animated sequences recorded on standard picture film, which has led Blackton to be considered the father of American animati ...

'' (1900). Méliès returned to sketching on film in his 1903 short '' The Untamable Whiskers'', in which the process of drawing comic faces on a blackboard was undercranked so as to seem to occur with great speed. Numerous political caricatures by Méliès, presumably similar to those made in the ''A Lightning Sketch'' films, survive in the collection of the

Centre national du cinéma Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricit ...

. All four films in the ''A Lightning Sketch'' series are currently presumed

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

Summary

The following table provides the number assigned to each film in the Star Film Company catalogues; the original English and French titles; and the subject of the drawing made in each film.Release data from ; subject identification from .

References

External links

* * * * 1896 films French black-and-white films French short documentary films French silent short films Films directed by Georges Méliès Lost French films 1890s short documentary films 1890s lost films 1890s French films {{1890s-France-film-stub