Melies' A TRIP TO THE MOON - 1902

On this day 105 years ago, Georges and Gaston Melies released the short black and white silent fiction film A TRIP TO THE MOON (French: Le Voyage dans la lune). The screenplay, or photoplay, was loosely adapted from Jules Verne's FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON and H.G. Wells' THE FIRST MEN ON THE MOON. Although the conventions, the grammar of cinema, had not been invented or established yet, the experimental nature of A TRIP TO THE MOON is visibly apparent.

"Although most of the editing in A TRIP TO THE MOON is purely functional, there is one unusual choice: when the astronomers land onto the lunar surface, the same event is shown twice, and very differently: the first time it is shown crashing into the eye of the man in the moon; the second time it is shown landing on the moon's flat terrain. The concept of showing an action twice in different ways was experimented with again by Porter in his film, LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN, released roughly a year after A TRIP TO THE MOON."
- wiki