Featured Audience Ratings

• Byron B

  
  This is an awesome documentary! It kept my full attention, but I did study film preservation in library school. The DVD includes the restored version of Melies' A Trip to the Moon. After Hugo got me interested in the magician, early fantasy master, and filmmaker Georges Melies,… More
  This is an awesome documentary! It kept my full attention, but I did study film preservation in library school. The DVD includes the restored version of Melies' A Trip to the Moon. After Hugo got me interested in the magician, early fantasy master, and filmmaker Georges Melies, it was great to find out that Cleveland's local Cinematheque partnered with the Capitol to present this educational doc along with the restored classic. The Extraordinary Voyage begins as a biography of George Melies. His career is explored with special focus on his most famous film. Scorsese's Hugo is never mentioned and Scorsese is not one of the interviewees, but Tom Hanks in the process of making a different doc about traveling to the moon that included recreations of some scenes from Melies' film does share some thoughts. Then the topic shifts to the process of preserving and restoring these cultural treasures. We hear from the technicians actually involved in the restoration of A Trip to the Moon. I haven't seen a documentary that goes into such depth about the real fragility of decomposing film stock and what it takes in terms of time and resources to piece even a 14 minute silent film back together. The history about early films being painted by hand was fascinating. I thought it was so cool to get a glimpse of the digital tools that make these restorations possible. The triumphant rebirth of A Trip to the Moon in its entirety is something very special.