ROCKETS TO THE MOON and BEYOND
With the recent NASA space shot up and around the moon - over 50 years since the first moon landings in 1969 and the early 1970s - space travel is back on the agenda in the Space Race.
The first commercial film shows took place in 1895 in Paris - short single-shot actuality films by the Lumiere brothers in Paris. The novelty of these ‘moving photographs’ was enough to make it profitable to show collections of films taken in streets and towns around Europe. Making film sequences to tell stories began in 1902, although American filmmakers claim that “The Great Train Robbery” of 1903 was the first story film (it was certainly the first Western).
The very first science fiction film was“A Trip To The Moon”by Georges Mélies in 1902 - see it here to start off our film show! These first films were short, but full of imagination. They didn’t use rockets - the astronauts were fired into space from gigantic guns. This way of getting into space was still being featured on screen in the 1930s - and we here you'll see the sequence in“Things to Come”(1936)of firing the colossal-sized gun being prepared and then firing the bullet-like space capsule while thousands of protesters try to stop the countdown. It’s a spectacularly-filmed scene!
The first big-budget science fiction films paved the way for the great Space epics which have since always been a mainstay of the commercial Cinema. Apart from feature films, space travel was adopted in the ever popular Serials which were part of pre-WWII cinema screenings - which would include a ‘B’-Picture, newsreels, cartoons etc. The serials had episodes always finishing in impossible-to-escape-from cliff-hangers - ensuring that punters came back week after week whatever the main feature films were. They were the ’soaps’ of the day.
The first big-budget science fiction films paved the way for the great Space epics which have always been a mainstay of the commercial Cinema. However: today we celebrate the pioneering creativity in action and adventure crafted in the early serials, including the original "Flash Gordon".
“Star Wars”was George Lucas’s tribute to the Serials - using all the techniques of those early quickly-made action-packed movies. So:Lots of film clips - ending with a lost episode of“Buck Rogers”(1939) re-constituted from two reels and fragments of a 1939 35mm copy of the film and restored by Ray Johnson of Staffordshire Film Archive - and first shown here in the Mitchell Arts Centre a few years ago.
Presented by Staffordshire Film Archive
No trailers or adverts. Films start prompt.
Community day films are drop in free events.
No trailers or adverts. Films start at 11am prompt.
MAC Community days brings you a programme of accessible film all in a bid to break barriers and create a happy place for our community. MAC Community days are in partner ship with Able Stoke, North Staffs Pensioners' Convention, and Staffordshire Sight Loss.
