MÉLIÈS FAIRY TALES IN COLOUR: 1902-1905
With soundtrack, 85 minutes.
Tickets: $25/$20
General seating - not reserved or numbered
(T 0419 267 318)
The extensive restoration efforts of the fairy tales will ensure that audiences will be delighted by the clarity, creativity and compositions that include A Trip to the Moon (1902), The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).
The special effects were all done with the camera - and with colour added to each frame by hand. The Méliès operation was a one-man show. He managed the theatre, wrote, produced, directed, edited, and acted in his films, as well as designed the sets and costumes. For A Trip to the Moon, the first science fiction film ever made, he sculpted the now iconic clay moon where the astronomers land their spaceship.
Many of the fairy tales were coloured by Élisabeth Thuillier and Marie-Berthe Thuillier, a mother-daughter team of French colourists who ran a workshop in Paris, where their employees hand-coloured early films and photographic slides using their plans and colour choices.
The Thuilliers led a studio of two hundred women, painting directly on film stock with brushes in carefully chosen colours. Each worker was assigned a specific colour to apply to a frame of film in assembly line style, with more than twenty colours sometimes used for a single film. On average, the Thuilliers' lab produced about sixty hand-coloured copies of a film.
When Méliès established his company, its slogan was, “The Whole World Within Reach”. And that is what his essential contribution provided in the invention of the movies with creative visuals beyond what anyone else had achieved more than a century ago.
Tickets: $25/$20
General seating - not reserved or numbered
(T 0419 267 318)
The extensive restoration efforts of the fairy tales will ensure that audiences will be delighted by the clarity, creativity and compositions that include A Trip to the Moon (1902), The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).
The special effects were all done with the camera - and with colour added to each frame by hand. The Méliès operation was a one-man show. He managed the theatre, wrote, produced, directed, edited, and acted in his films, as well as designed the sets and costumes. For A Trip to the Moon, the first science fiction film ever made, he sculpted the now iconic clay moon where the astronomers land their spaceship.
Many of the fairy tales were coloured by Élisabeth Thuillier and Marie-Berthe Thuillier, a mother-daughter team of French colourists who ran a workshop in Paris, where their employees hand-coloured early films and photographic slides using their plans and colour choices.
The Thuilliers led a studio of two hundred women, painting directly on film stock with brushes in carefully chosen colours. Each worker was assigned a specific colour to apply to a frame of film in assembly line style, with more than twenty colours sometimes used for a single film. On average, the Thuilliers' lab produced about sixty hand-coloured copies of a film.
When Méliès established his company, its slogan was, “The Whole World Within Reach”. And that is what his essential contribution provided in the invention of the movies with creative visuals beyond what anyone else had achieved more than a century ago.
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State Library NSW Conditions of Entry
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Sunday 12 January 2025 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (UTC+11)
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Contact Details
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Location
State Library NSW
Metcalfe Auditorium, Macquarie Street
Entrance is via rear of the cafe
Sydney NSW 2000