duVoyage - Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma

Georges Meliès
1861
Georges Méliès is born in
Paris, 3 rd arrondissement, on
December 8 th . His father is a
wealthy shoe manufacturer.
1880
As a student at Louis le Grand
high school in Paris, he displays
a gift for drawing and
painting. He obtains his high
school diploma in 1880, completes
his military service,
and joins the family business.
1884
Sent to London by his father
to learn about sales techniques
and practice English, he takes
the opportunity to attend a
well-known theater of magic,
and becomes a magician. He
forges relationships with a
number of performers and other
show business professionals.
1878
Eadweard Muybridge has the
idea of aligning twenty-four cameras
to break down the movement
of a galloping horse.
The photographs are then placed
in a device he invented, the
Zoopraxiscope, which is used
to animate the horse’s running
motion.
1882
Étienne-Jules Marey is also
working on the movement of
animals, and creates a photographic
gun which he then
equips with a glass plate: this
process is ‘chronophotography’.
1884
Eastman invents film, a flexible
medium for animated
images, placed on the market
in 1889 (the Kodak trademark
is registered in 1888).
1885
He marries Eugénie Génin, a
wealthy heiress, who will bear
him two children.
1886
He performs at the Musée Grévin
and the Galerie Vivienne.
1888
Birth of his daughter Georgette,
who will later assist
him as a cinema operator
and theater director. Thanks
to funds received from his father,
in July he buys the Robert-Houdin
theater of magic
and becomes its director.
1888
Emile Reynaud creates optical
theater. He is better versed in
drawing than photography.
He makes up stories, draws
them directly on gelatin,
strings them together in sequence,
and shows them to an
audience. Showings at the
Musée Grévin from 1892 to 1900.
Louis Aimée Augustin Le Prince
(1841-1890) builds a movie camera
and submits a patent
application for it on January
11 th 1888. He shoots on the Leeds
Bridge and at Roundhay, his
home in England, in October
1888. These little-known experiments
could be the oldest
existing films.
1889-90
While creating or modernizing
magic shows in his theater, he
also draws political caricatures
for a newspaper founded
by his cousin, Adolphe Méliès.
This weekly paper, La Griffe, opposes
General Boulanger, who
is trying to mount a coup
d’état in France. After his failure,
the paper disappears.
1891
He founds the Académie de
Prestidigitation (Academy of
Conjuring), conferring a status
on illusionists, previously
viewed by the authorities as
mere nomads or peddlers.
Birth of motion picture
1891-92
USA / First motion picture camera,
the Kinetograph, designed
by W.K.L. Dickson for
Thomas Edison, marketed in
1894.
1892
Eastman Co. becomes Eastman
Kodak, world leader in film
for photography and cinematography.
1894
USA / First movie studio, the
Black Maria, built by Edison.
USA / First (individual) projections
of films using the Kinetoscope
(peep show device).
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1895
The Lumière brothers, inventors
of the Cinematograph,
give their first public performance
on December 28 th at the
Grand Café, near the Robert-
Houdin theater. Georges Méliès
is invited to the premiere by
their father, Antoine Lumière,
a photographer he knows well.
Feb 1 st 1895
The Lumière brothers patent
the cinematograph, but do
not present it until March,
followed by an official public
presentation in December.
August 1895
France / L.Gaumont & Co.
founded by Louis Gaumont.
Nov 1 st 1895
Germany / Max von Skladanovsky
gives a public demonstration
of his invention,
the Bioscope, before demonstrating
it at the Salon Indien,
but the machine is heavy and
impractical, and does not survive
the competition with the
Lumière machine.
1895
France / December 28 th , first
on-screen projection by the
Lumière brothers, who present
a recording and projection
system.
1895-1896
USA/Creation of the first major
American movie companies:
Vitagraph, Cineograph (Lubin),
Polyoscope Company (Selig)
and American Mutoscope Company,
founded by W.K.L. Dickson
among others (this later became
American Mutoscope and
Biograph (AM&B), and then
Biograph Co).
1896
Creation of the Pathé Frères
company by brothers Charles
and Emile Pathé, marketing
phonographs, cinematographs,
and precision instruments.
1896
He uses this scientific invention
for the purpose of enhancing
the illusions in his
shows at the Robert-Houdin
theater. He manufactures his
own filming device, the Kinetograph,
and records his
first films in April. His first
film using ‘trick’ cinematography
(by stopping the camera),
Escamotage d’une dame
(‘Vanishing Lady at Robert
Houdin’s Place'), is produced
the same year. Over the years,
he invents the set of cinema
tricks known today as ‘special
effects’.
Early 1896
Launch of the Biograph, a
projection device, by the American
Mutoscope Company,
which spreads all across the
USA, as well as Europe from
1897 onward.
March2 nd 1896
In the United Kingdom, Robert
William Paul markets the
Theatograph, a projector that
will be acquired by Méliès.
April20 rd 1896
France / Louis Henri Charles
files a patent application for
a moving picture projection
device.
1897
He orders the construction, to
his own blueprints, of Studio
A in the vegetable garden of
his property in Montreuilsous-Bois.
This is the world’s
first purpose-built, fully
equipped movie studio.
1898
Edison starts ‘patent wars’
with all of his competitors in
the USA (projection and recording).
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