Summary

WINNER! 2011 National Society of Film Critics – “Best Film Restoration” Award

Screen the original hand-painted color version of Georges Méliès’ masterpiece, A Trip to the Moon (1902 / 15 min.) over 100 years after its first release.

The material for A Trip to the Moon is sourced from a restored color version that had been considered lost for several decades and is presented with an original soundtrack by the French band, AIR. In 2010, three experts in worldwide film restoration – a private collection Lobster Films, and two non-profit entities, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage – launched the most complex and ambitious restoration in the history of cinema, over 12 years, using advanced digital technologies to reassemble and restore the fragments of the 13,375 frames.

The restoration print premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 and made a worldwide tour of international festivals including Telluride, Pordenone, Rotterdam, and the MoMA Festival of Film Preservation. Now, one of the most technically sophisticated and expensive restorations in film history, A Trip to the Moon can thrill audiences in your theater. 

For more information about renting The Man with the Movie Camera on 35mm or Blu-ray for your theater, please fill out the Request Screening form or click the button below.

Reviews

“Although this release may have been spurred on by the film’s inclusion in Martin Scorsese’s recent Oscar-nominated kids’ movie “Hugo,” the 14-minute-long French black-and-white silent film from Georges Méliès remains a visionary masterpiece. Based in part on both Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon” and H.G. Wells’ “First Men on the Moon” (clearly copyright laws were somewhat more lax back then), it’s seen as a groundbreaking work for a number of reasons (it boldly combined animation and special effects for a series of unforgettable images, most notably the spaceship being lodged in the moon’s eye) and largely considered one of the greatest films of all time. Last year the film was screened with a brand new (and entirely intoxicating) score from French electronic duo Air. That score is included here, along with the original hand-coloring of the film (cells were literally painted) . . . A Trip to the Moon still soars.”

– Indiewire

“The colorized edition has the music by ‘Air’ (Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel) and is rhythmic, intense, has some gaps with mumbling – a representation of the onscreen activity, well timed explosions and is, overall, a revelation – a great way to view the film, IMO. . . . Both the colorization and the ‘Air’ audio are liking have a surreal film experience with A Trip to the Moon – brilliant! I loved it.”

– DVD Beaver

“It’s one of the most famous films in cinema, a special-effects, science-fiction extravaganza that became an international sensation when it was released in 1902. Almost instantly it was pirated, bootlegged, copied and released by competing studios under different names. And for decades it’s only been available in black-and-white copies.

Now, after a 12 year project that approached a half-million euros in cost, Lobster Films, The Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage, and Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma are unveiling a new version of A Trip to the Moon, ‘resurrected,’ in the words of preservationist Tom Burton, from an original, hand-colored nitrate print. For the first time in generations viewers will be able to see the color version of the film that stunned early 20th-century moviegoers.”

– Smithsonian.com