Repatriating the Work of Georges Méliès

<p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="first" dir="auto" id="d9462771e133">Obliged to vacate his studio when it fell into ruin in 1923, Georges Méliès had to part with the material stored there: films, costumes, sets, props, archives…. In 1945, only eight or nine of his films remained in France. For sixty years, his granddaughter Madeleine, who was the young witness to the effacement, then the rediscovery, and finally the celebration of the great creator of the cinematographic spectacle, searched the world over and collected this lost work in order to repatriate it. A few years ago, a large part of it was entrusted to the Cinémathèque Française. The Cinémathèque now boasts the world‘s largest collection dedicated to this precursor of special effects and has created a Méliès museum within its walls.