A Trip to the Moon(1902)

An illusionist and stage magician, and a wizard at special effects, Melies exploited the new medium with a pioneering, 14-minute science fiction work, Le Voyage Dans la Lune - A Trip to the Moon (1902). It was his most popular and best-known work, with about 30 scenes called tableaux. He incorporated surrealistic special effects, including the memorable image of a rocketship landing and gouging out the eye of the 'man in the moon.' Melies also introduced the idea of narrative storylines, plots, character development, illusion, and fantasy into film, including trick photography (early special effects), hand-tinting, dissolves, wipes, 'magical' super-impositions and double exposures, the use of mirrors, trick sets, stop motion, slow-motion and fade-outs/fade-ins. Although his use of the camera was innovative, the camera remained stationary and recorded the staged production from one position only.

Cendrillon(1899)

The Haunted Castle (1896)

La Manoir du Diable (The Devilâs Castle) was released on Christmas Eve, 1896, at the Theatre Robert Houdin, 8 boulevard des Italiens, Paris. It is only about 3 minutes long and although its creator intended it to be amusing most people consider it to be a horror film. 

admiral cigarette (1897)

The Lumiere Brothers First films (1895)

A collection of short films made by the Lumiere brothers, a team of pioneering filmmakers in turn-of-the-century France.

Annabelle Serpentine Dance(1894)

Annabelle Serpentine Dance one of several silent films produced and distributed by Edison Manufacturing Company in the late 19th century. Each depicts the popular serpentine dance performed by Annabelle Whitford. Many of the prints were distributed in color

Experimental Sound Film (1894-1895)

In the early 1890s, Edison and Dickson also devised a prototype sound-film system called the Kinetophonograph or Kinetophone - a precursor of the 1891 Kinetoscope with a cylinder-playing phonograph (and connected earphone tubes) to provide the unsynchronized sound. The projector was connected to the phonograph with a pulley system, but it didn't work very well and was difficult to synchronize. It was formally introduced in 1895, but soon proved to be unsuccessful since competitive, better synchronized devices were also beginning to appear at the time. The first known (and only surviving) film with live-recorded sound made to test the Kinetophone was the 17-second Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894-1895).