A Trip to the Moon on Nuit Blanche

Join us this Scotiabank Nuit Blanche on a “trip to the moon,” TIFF Cinematheque’s all-night programme celebrating the origins of cinema, with films by les frères Lumière (Louis & Auguste) and Georges Méliès. 

Since its birth in 1895 (the date on which an audience first assembled and paid to watch a screening – a very short one! – in the Salon Indien at the Grand Café in Paris), the cinema has split into two principal strands: the documentary mode commonly associated with the Lumière brothers, and fiction, which evolved from the fantastical storytelling and wildly creative set design of Georges Méliès, a magician who was among the paying spectators in that historic first screening.

As the never-ending saga of “Louis vs. Georges” resurfaces throughout the evolution of cinema (see our essay film series on pages 40-47 for fine examples), with works in both camps routinely defying their own categories, this programme, while providing endless enjoyment and awe, also demonstrates how, right from the start, cinema was born of a desire to marry art and life in ways both ecstatic and eloquent. Among the films included here are such famous works as the Lumière’s Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895) and The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895), which, according to legend, caused a mass exodus when first screened, so convincingly real did that locomotive seem, and Méliès’ beloved and oft-quoted A Trip to the Moon (1902).

The films will be projected repeatedly throughout the course of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche and will feature live, improvised scores by pianists William O’Meara, Andrei Streliaev, and Robert Hall.