Launched initially as a Kickstarter campaign – how about a pledge as a Christmas gift, folks? – the family of Georges Méliès have gathered together a collection of stories found in libraries and family archives that shed more light on the life and work one of the most intriguing and important figures in the history of filmmaking.
The book, which will be available in French and English, is described as being accessible and richly illustrated and neither a novel nor a biography, nor a book for academics, film historians or film technicians.
Table of Contents
- Foreward by American film director, visual effects director, and producer (winner of 2 Oscars – “Return of the Jedi” and “Jurassic Park” and an Emmy award) Phil Tippett
- Key dates of Georges Méliè’s life with comments
- The Méliè family tree
- Testimonies
- Memoirs and personal writings
- Never-before published memoirs written by …
- son André
- nephew Paul
- second wife Fanny
- great-great granddaughter Pauline
- Testimonies from close friends and industry colleagues
Additional information from the book’s Kickstarter page
- why and how Georges Méliès was able to be the key man in the birth of the 7th art (he explains it in his memoirs and several little-known writings)
- his rich and complex artistic universe: at once poetic, enchanting, and magical but also politically engaged, avant-garde, and humorous.
- how the cinema was only one period of his life. There was also magic with his Robert-Houdin theater and then his shows in his Variétés Artistiques theater surrounded by his children.
- why and how did he overcome the countless and incredible challenges of this emerging technology to make us dream?
- his American adventure with his older brother Gaston and his struggle to survive in Edison’s territory.
- his vision of the cinema professions in his time and their evolution in the years to come.
- how his relatives and friends portray unknown aspects of his personality, both whimsical and workaholic. They also reveal the flaws at the origin of his failures and his ruin.
- you will discover his rebirth in the 30s thanks to the press campaigns that allowed his rehabilitation. A period when he was a candy seller at the Gare Montparnasse (Film by Martin Scorsese – 2011)