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 the 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 by Louis Lumière.

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