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Discovering Lost Films of Georges Méliès in fin-de-siècle Flip Books (1896–1901)
by Thierry Lecointe, Pascal Fouché, Robert Byrne and Pamela Hutchinson
Published by: John Libbey Publishing
280 Pages, 200 color illus., 600 b&w illus.
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No living person has seen the earliest films of pioneering cinema magician, Georges Méliès. All that remain are his catalogs and a few archival images. The 2013 discovery of a flip book manufactured by an obscure Parisian bimbelotier, Léon Beaulieu, promised a glimpse of an unseen Méliès film. This idea inspired years of investigation by researcher Thierry Lecointe – a trail that led him to collector and historian Pascal Fouché and his amazing collection of more than 10,000 flip books, including 27 produced by the mysterious Beaulieu. The conclusions of Lecointe's ground- breaking research are astonishing. Léon Beaulieu's primitive flip books were comprised of images appropriated from early films, many of them lost treasures. Early films by Méliès, but also Gaumont, Skladanowsky and Pathé suddenly came to life after more than a century! This meticulously researched volume reveals how these miraculous discoveries were made and features more than 500 previously unpublished images that you won't have seen anywhere else.
Robert Byrne is an award-winning film restorer specializing in early cinema and films of the silent era. Working with film archives and collections worldwide he has led restorations of more than twenty feature films and numerous short subjects. He has lectured at the Library of Congress, University College Cork, Queen's University Belfast, The Reel Thing Symposium, and numerous AMIA and FIAF technical symposiums. Rob publishes regularly on the topics of motion picture restoration and preservation and serves as President of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, a nonprofit organization dedicated to live cinema performance and educating the public about silent film as an art form and as a culturally valuable historical record. Thierry Lecointe, independent re- searcher, has published numerous articles on the origins of cinema, particularly editions of the Domitor Society for the Study of Early Cinema,published in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and in specialized magazines such as 1895 revue d'histoire du cinéma. He is also the author of Le Cinématographe-Lumière dans les arènes (1896-1899). He has given several conferences for the GRAFICS research group in Montreal, the Domitor association, the Jean Vigo Institute in Perpignan and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
"This astonishing book is the product of remarkable collaborative scholarship, lucid inter- pretation of evidence, and an incredibly lucky discovery. It is also a tribute to the pub- lisher who had the bravery and intellectual resources to deal with multiple authors, texts in English and French, a myriad of photographs, and two silent film festivals con- tinents apart."
~David Mayer - University of Manchester, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film