Loosely based on Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon; George Melies 1902 film A Trip to the Moon was groundbreaking. The silent science fiction movie had both a black and white and color version, the latter of which had been assumed long lost until relatively recently.
For the past 12 years, film archivists Lobster Films, the Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema, and the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage have been working to fully restore the 60-minute color print of this amazing film for a re-release. As part of the project, musical group Air has composed a new score for the film. BBC World News Today has an informative video segment on the whole project. Check out some before and after pictures below the cut.
All images are copyright 2011 Lobster Films – Groupama Gan Foundation – Technicolor Foundation. You can see more before-and-after stills on their site here.
Stubby the Rocket is the voice and mascot of Tor.com. Stubby is proud to see its great-grandrocket’s groundbreaking maiden voyage lovingly restored.
Where can I see the actual movie?
A quick correction – it would be easy to mis-hear because of the accents in the BBC report, but the film is actually 16 minutes long, not 60.
Yeah, the film is definitely not 60 minutes. They simply didn’t make movies that long back in 1902.
wow!! this is a very old one!!, one of my favorites on classic movies, also, i see that Disney is planing to release a new (and very interesting) sci fi movie, it´s called “Jhon Carter”, i really can´t resume the movie, it´s a little complicated, here is the full story http://enocmartinez.wordpress.com/ enjoy
@elenasan….Diseny needs to release the segement of the proposed “FANTASIA 2” that Salvatore Dali did. They had a special showing a few years back at the Dali museum in Tampa, then I heard it made the rounds to a few select museums across the country. It needs a proper release, truely amazing work. You can find small clips on youtube, but are mostly from handheld devices from the museum showings.
cool but 16 not 60 min