(Le voyage dans la lune, Georges Méliès, France 1902, 14 min.)

Special Screening! Presented in its fully restored original 1902 colors (and featuring a new, kinetic soundtrack by AIR), Georges Méliès’ classic tale of a lunar voyage is now as beautiful as ever. Come see the restoration that premiered at Cannes 2011. Winner of the 2011 National Society of Film Critics’ Best Film Restoration Award. — American Cinematheque

“Surely a cinematic highlight of the year, maybe the century.” — A.O. Scott

Preceded by:
The Extraordinary Voyage
(Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange, France 2011, 78 min., Digital Projection)

This documentary chronicles the recent restoration of Méliès’ fantastical A Trip to the Moon to its original 1902 colors — archivists Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange of Lobster Films acquiring a damaged color print; the tedium of peeling off and unrolling the nitrate print fragments for digitization; two-years discovering the images on those fragments; and the eight-year wait for technology to become available to finish the project. Includes interviews with contemporary filmmakers Costa-Gavras, Michel Gondry, Michel Hazanavicius and Jean-Pierre Jeunet on Méliès’ enduring significance to cinema. —American Cinematheque

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