With originals, facsimiles and over an hour of projections throughout the exhibition, the exhibition traces the itinerary of a prodigy artist from the earliest days of cinema. Georges Méliès, cartoonist, painter, caricaturist, magician, phantasmagorist, director of the Robert-Houdin Theatre, set designer, man of the stage, writer, actor, technician and visionary director, made more than 500 films between 1896 and 1912.

Theatrical machinery, pyrotechnics, optical effects, horizontal and vertical dropouts, camera stops, cross-fades, overprints, conjuring, editing effects and colour effects on film, all seem to have been designed and used by this virtuoso of the technique. Thanks to his early awareness of the magical power of the moving image, thanks to his keen sense of the scene, Méliès profoundly shook-up the world of emerging cinema, and still exerts a powerful fascination.

curator: La Cinémathèque Française - Laurent Manonni, scenography: Atelier Sylvain Roca, graphism: Depli Design Studio 

photos: Sylvain Roca