La Photographie électrique à distance (1908)

La Photographie électrique à distance (Long Distance Wireless Photography) is a 1908 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès and produced by his Star Film Company. The film imagines a machine capable of transmitting photographic images over a distance and projecting them at large scale, placing photography within contemporary speculation about electricity, wireless communication and the transmission of images. Méliès plays the inventor, who demonstrates the apparatus by transmitting an image of the Three Graces before inviting his visitors to sit for their own electronic portraits. The resulting distorted and unexpected images turn the technological demonstration into comedy. Made at a time when experimental systems for transmitting photographs electrically were already being developed, the film is an early cinematic representation of remote image transmission and anticipates later ideas associated with television and electronic imaging. It also demonstrates Méliès's established use of substitution, multiple exposure and other photographic effects to make apparently impossible transformations visible on screen. Released internationally under titles including Long Distance Wireless Photography in the United States and Electrical Photographer in Britain, the film survives as an unusual intersection between the histories of photography, cinema and telecommunications.

Georges Méliès
Trick Film

Camera is on:
Thank you for all your support.

La Photographie électrique à distance (1908)
Directed by Georges Méliès.
Produced by Star Film Company.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Licence: Public Domain.

#GeorgesMelies #LaPhotographieElectriqueADistance #LongDistanceWirelessPhotography #photographyhistory #historyofphotography #photography #earlycinema #silentfilm #trickfilm #photographic #1908 #cinemahistory