Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), the landmark silent film directed by prolific filmmaker Georges Méliès in 1902. The version above is accompanied by the Billi Brass Quintet, with original Music by David Short. From Wikipedia:
Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne’s novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon’s surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return in a splashdown to Earth with a captive Selenite in tow.
It features an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers, led by Méliès himself in the main role of Professor Barbenfouillis, and is filmed in the overtly theatrical style for which Méliès became famous…
A Trip to the Moon is now the best-known of the hundreds of films made by Méliès, and the moment in which the capsule lands in the Moon’s eye remains one of the most iconic and frequently referenced images in the history of cinema.
Watch the silent version, via Open Culture:
You can also watch it on Amazon.
In the archives: the Apollo 8 crew orbits the moon in 1968.
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