Wonders and music

As known, cinema was invented in France. The Lumière brothers’ films showed trains arriving, workers and new-born babies. Seeing these fragments of life was already at the time astonishing; but then Georges Méliès came along. Conjurer, actor, impresario and inventor, he unleashed the phantasmagorical power of cinema, creating alternative worlds with theatre sets and, above all, brilliant new optical effects. And not only: he was one of the first to believe in colour film, having some of his films painted entirely by hand. Along with a selected accompaniment of French piano pieces from Méliès’ time, we will rediscover three colour films: the two space epics Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) and Voyage à travers l’impossible (1904), and the fabulous visions of Le Royaume des fées (1903).