Suggests: Voyages through Earth, Sea, and Space
Sun, Feb 09
|Cambridge


Time & Location
Feb 09, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Cambridge, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
About the event
Georges Méliès’ background as a liberal-minded political cartoonist is most clearly revealed in his cinematic tales of travel, adventure and exploration. At the turn of the nineteenth century, colonization was in the process of enriching major world powers while undermining or destroying indigenous cultures. Méliès recognized this internationally practiced government initiative as a power- and resource-mongering exploitation favoring violence toward and distrust of colonized peoples in the name of modernity. Consequently, many of Méliès’ voyage films depict absent-minded, abusive and disaster-prone characters as they bumble through wonderous settings and unknown places, often easily distracted from their missions or halted by missteps. In this way, Méliès illustrated the absurdity of colonialism and provided audiences with a lighthearted yet critical view of the driving foreign policy of the time. Along with Méliès’ humorously ineffectual characters, modern technology also proves its unreliability and unpredictability in his films—which are, of course, only made possible by that very…