An astronomer has a terrifying dream.
One of the greatest of black art pictures. The conjurer appears before the audience, with his head in its proper place. He then removes his head, and throwing it in the air, it appears on the table opposite another head, and both detached heads sing in unison. The conjurer then removes it a third time. You then see all three of his heads, which are exact duplicates, upon the table at one time, while the conjurer again stands before the audience with his head perfectly intact, singing in unison with the three heads upon the table. He closes the picture by bowing himself from the stage.
At the royal court, a prince is presenting the princess whom he is pledged to marry when a witch suddenly appears. Though driven off, the witch soon returns, summons some of her servants, and carries off the princess. A rescue party is quickly organized, but the unfortunate captive has been taken to a strange, forbidding realm, from where it will be impossible to rescue her without some special help.
The earliest surviving celluloid film, and believed to be the second moving picture ever created, was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera. It was taken in the garden of Oakwood Grange, the Whitley family house in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire (UK), possibly on 14 October 1888. The film shows Adolphe Le Prince (Le Prince's son), Mrs. Sarah Whitley (Le Prince's mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley, and Miss Harriet Hartley walking around in circles, laughing to themselves, and staying within the area framed by the camera. The Roundhay Garden Scene was recorded at 12 frames per second and runs for 2.11 seconds.
A legendary and friendly creature named Nessie lives happily in a small pond with her friend MacQuack, a rubber duck. When a rich developer takes the pond and land surrounding it to build a miniature golf course, Nessie is forced to search for a new home.
A chemist carries out a bizarre experiment with his own head.
A man has a fantastical nightmare involving, among other things, a grinning malevolent moon.
A trainer attempts to retrain a vicious dog that’s been raised to kill black people.
A traveler at an inn is harassed by a mischievous devil in his room.
The Lumière catalog sold this title as 13 individual, one-scene films, allowing exhibitors to choose which films they wanted to purchase and how to arrange them in their programs. Lumière catalog no. 933 through 945.
A pig dressed in fancy clothes flirts with a pretty girl, but she humiliates him and tears off his suit; she then makes him dance for her affections. It is a filmed version of a vaudeville act called "Le cochon mondain" by Odéo, who play the pig himself, in the suit he designed.
A fairy godmother magically turns Cinderella's rags to a beautiful dress, and a pumpkin into a coach. Cinderella goes to the ball, where she meets the Prince - but will she remember to leave before the magic runs out? Méliès based the art direction on engravings by Gustave Doré. First known example of a fairy-tale adapted to film, and the first film to use dissolves to go from one scene to another.
A priest is officiating at a convent, when suddenly he is transformed into the devil, who frightens away the nuns and turns the place into pandemonium.
A thirty-second long stop-motion animated piece intended to encourage the audience to send matches to British troops fighting the Boer War.
A group of travellers go into a house for protection. Little do they know, it is filled with ghosts who make unusual things happen to them.
A man is increasingly unnerved by a mysterious portrait. Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol, the film is thought to have run about 45 minutes long, but only an 8 minute fragment is known to have survived.
In a medieval castle, a dark magician thought to be Mephistopheles conjures up a series of bizarre creatures and events in order to torment a pair of interloping cavaliers.
Professor Barbenfouillis and five of his colleagues from the Academy of Astronomy travel to the Moon aboard a rocket propelled by a giant cannon. Once on the lunar surface, the bold explorers face the many perils hidden in the caves of the mysterious planet.
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
Walking in her home, Evelia experiences the past, the present and the future at the same time. In the symbolic life she leads, governed by the god Janus, everything around her seems to speak to her, until random visions are born poetic. Through the trance state that awakens the inner gaze, Evelia's anima connects with the anima mundi. Simonetta's eyes is about the memory that a person will leave behind; Evelia tells the viewer, with the language of the gaze: "one day, we will only be memory".
An urban legend says that lighting fireworks at an abandoned airfield will beckon the "summer ghost," a spirit that can answer any question. Three teenagers, Tomoya, Aoi, and Ryo, each have their own reason to show up one day. When a ghost named Ayane appears, she reveals she is only visible to those "who are about to touch their death." Compelled by the ghost and her message, Tomoya begins regularly visiting the airfield to uncover the true purpose of her visits.
Torn by the farewell letter of his boyfriend, Samuel tries to change his ideas in nature. The forest will bring him a strange and sensual consolation…
The evil Queen Bavmorda hunts the newborn princess Elora Danan, a child prophesied to bring about her downfall. When the royal infant is found by Willow, a timid farmer and aspiring sorcerer, he's entrusted with delivering her from evil.
A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.
Bruce Nolan toils as a "human interest" television reporter in Buffalo, NY, but despite his high ratings and the love of his beautiful girlfriend, Bruce remains unfulfilled. At the end of the worst day in his life, he angrily ridicules God — and the Almighty responds, endowing Bruce with all of His divine powers.
With input from actor and writer Jan Hlobil, director and cinematographer Rene Smaal presents a film in the true surrealist tradition, in the sense that only 'found' elements were used, and that it defies interpretation based on ordinary cause-and-effect time sequence.
A beautiful girl, Snow White, takes refuge in the forest in the house of seven dwarfs to hide from her stepmother, the wicked Queen. The Queen is jealous because she wants to be known as "the fairest in the land," and Snow White's beauty surpasses her own.
Captain Etienne Navarre is a man on whose shoulders lies a cruel curse. Punished for loving each other, Navarre must become a wolf by night whilst his lover, Lady Isabeau, takes the form of a hawk by day. Together, with the thief Philippe Gaston, they must try to overthrow the corrupt Bishop and in doing so break the spell.
12-year-old Conor encounters an ancient tree monster who proceeds to help him cope with his mother's terminal illness and being bullied in school.
Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home.
The mysterious Count Orlok summons Thomas Hutter to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen. After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok's servant, Knock, prepares for his master to arrive at his new home.
I was very small, but I still clearly remember. Dad and mum didn't see it but I, I knew straight away. What was in the crib wasn't my little brother. No. It was you.
Un Chien Andalou is an European avant-garde surrealist film, a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali.
First-time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
Tonight's program has been composed by and for grown-ups who are children at heart. Eternal history, the tale of Belle-Rose. Also known as Beauty and the Beast.
A school teacher with supernatural sensitivities chances upon a pair of ghostly lovers who are trapped in her new home. Reluctant at first, she helps them understand that clinging to the material world is a futile effort, and helps them find a way out.
Jess joins her friends at a party in a dilapidated mansion hosted by the mysterious Seth. When odd things begin to happen to Jess and her friends, the Phantom Stranger intervenes to save her from a dreary fate.
The beautiful princess Giselle is banished by an evil queen from her magical, musical animated land and finds herself in the gritty reality of the streets of modern-day Manhattan. Shocked by this strange new environment that doesn't operate on a "happily ever after" basis, Giselle is now adrift in a chaotic world badly in need of enchantment. But when Giselle begins to fall in love with a charmingly flawed divorce lawyer who has come to her aid - even though she is already promised to a perfect fairy tale prince back home - she has to wonder: Can a storybook view of romance survive in the real world?