Maries-Georges-Jean Méliès was born on December 8, 1861, in Paris, France.

Georges Méliès’s parents had a shoe factory, so young Georges could receive a high-quality education, yet his artistic passion was predominant.

When he finished school, Georges Méliès started working in his family’s factory, then he went to work in London, where he became interested in illusionism. Back in Paris, Méliès got married to Eugènie Gènin and went to work again in his family’s factory, but he also took lessons to become a magician and started performing.

In 1888, when his father retired, Georges Méliès sold his share of his family’s factory to his brothers, and putting the money he earned together with his wife’s dowry, he bought the Theatre Robert-Houdin. At the time, attendance to magic shows was low, so Méliès completely renewed them and also created new tricks himself. It was there that he met Jeanne d’Alcy, who became his mistress and, years later, his second wife.

On December 28, 1895, Georges Méliès attended the first public demonstration of cinema by the Lumière brothers. Méliès offered the Lumières 10.000 francs for one of their cameras, but the brothers refused this and other rich proposals.

Georges Méliès decided to buy a copy of a kinetoscope, the machine invented by Thomas Edison, later he had a camera built, one similar to the Lumière brothers’ one, and in 1897, he bought a better camera when it was put on the market.

Georges Méliès started shooting his films in May 1896 and brought into the new medium the ideas developed during his work as a magician because for him, cinema was a show just like the ones he created in his theater. From the beginning, he experimented with various techniques and tricks, and for this, he’s considered the father of special effects.

Georges Méliès is also considered the father of the fantastic genres, as he shot what is considered the first horror movie, “The House of the Devil” (“Le Manoir du diable”) in 1896, but also what is considered the first science fiction movie, “A Trip to the Moon” (“Le Voyage dans la Lune”) in 1902.

Georges Méliès directed over 1500 films, the majority of which were destroyed, between 1896 and 1914. However, he was selling copies of his films one at a time, but quickly several competitors started their activity, and they licensed their movies, earning more money. Eventually, Méliès’s film company went bankrupt, and he returned to magic shows.

He was forgotten for a while, but some years later his films were rediscovered, and in 1931 Georges Méliès received the Legion of Honor from Louis Lumière.

Georges Méliès died on January 21, 1938, but his legacy is still alive, and today he’s recognized as one of the fathers of cinema.