End Credits turns it on over the weekend with an exciting variety of films at Centre of Contemporary Arts.

Local film club End Credits continues its Unseen Cinema program in 2012 with a huge week of top films from across the globe.

Kicking off tonight with a screening of Australian documentary Persecution Blues: The Battle For The Tote (see page 9 for full details), the action continues Friday with a special silent double feature of A Trip To The Moon and An Extraordinary Voyage and winds up on Sunday with gripping Indian drama Trishna.

Science fiction fans will be in their element with Friday night’s program, with George Méliès’ masterpiece A Trip To The Moon (1902), credited as being the first ever film in the genre.

The legendary director, who featured as a character in Martin Scorsese’s 3D film Hugo last year, remains influential to this day, being one of the first to utilise modern filmmaking techniques including multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves and hand-painted colour in his work.

In 2010, three experts in worldwide film restoration – a private collection Lobster Films, and two non-profit entities, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage – launched the most complex and ambitious restoration in the history of cinema, over 12 years, using advanced digital technologies to reassemble and restore the fragments of the 13,375 frames.

The restoration print premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 and made a worldwide tour of international festivals including Telluride, Pordenone and the MoMA Festival of Film Preservation.

Featuring the iconic image of a rocket ship crashed into the moon’s eye (see inset picture), Méliès’ most famous work will also feature, for the first time, a soundtrack by legendary French band Air, adding to the experience.
Also included in the program is The Extraordinary Voyage, a documentary directed by Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange about the life of George Méliès and the magic of film history and preservation.

On Sunday, Trishna wraps up the big week of flicks.

Directed by Michael Winterbottom (Genova, A Mighty Heart), Trishna is a modern-day retelling of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Ubervilles.

Starring Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto, the film is a beautifully shot tale of love and tragedy set across modern day rural Rajasthan and the metropolis of Mumbai.

End Credits week of Unseen Cinema kicks off tonight with Persecution Blues: The Battle For The Tote, continues with A Trip To The Moon and An Extraordinary Voyage on Friday and winds up on Sunday with Trishna. Go to endcredits.org.au for more.

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