A Trip to the Moon

In Its Original 1902 Colors/The Extraordinary Voyage

A Trip To The Moon (1902): The material for A Trip to the Moon is sourced from a restored color version that had been considered lost for several decades and is presented with an original soundtrack by the French band, AIR. In 2010, three experts in worldwide film restoration - a private collection Lobster Films, and two non-profit entities, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage - launched the most complex and ambitious restoration in the history of cinema, over 12 years, using advanced digital technologies to reassemble and restore the fragments of the 13,375 frames. The restoration print premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 and made a worldwide tour of international festivals including Telluride, Pordenone, Rotterdam, and the MoMA Festival of Film Preservation. Now, one of the most technically sophisticated and expensive restorations in film history, A Trip to the Moon can thrill audiences in its original 1902 colors.

The Extraordinary Voyage (2011): The Extraordinary Voyage chronicles the journey of A Trip to the Moon from the fantastical Melies' production in 1902 to the astonishing rediscovery of a nitrate print in color in 1993, to the premiere of the new restoration on the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. The story of Moon's restoration to its original 1902 colors unfolds as Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange acquire a severely damaged color print from the Filmoteca de Catalunya in 1999 and then begin the tedious task of peeling off and unrolling the nitrate prints to be able to digitize them. It took two years to discover the images on those fragments, which were then stored on a hard drive for 8 years as the technology available at the time did not allow Lobster Films to continue the landmark restoration. The documentary includes interviews with contemporary filmmakers, including Costa Gavras, Michel Gondry, Michel Hazanavicius, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet on Melies' enduring significance to cinema.