Gaston Velle

A boy is put to bed by his mother, but when she leaves the room, he pulls out a book. Dropping off to sleep, he begins to dream. The wall behind him transforms into a screen, with a portrait of Jules Verne. The boy imagines the starry night sky, with comets shooting by. The gondola of a balloon parks outside his window. He climbs aboard, ascending over a skyline and harbor.

An old astronomer has been transfixed by a star for a long time. He had but one thought: to travel to it, to declare his love for it! But how? A simple but ingenious solution-- A giant bubble. Velle remade the film for Italian studio Cines in the same year.

This is an incomplete fragment of a longer film, so doesn’t make much sense, but it’s very beautiful and colourful with plenty of fireworks, flames and fountains as well as the customary fairies, magic and dancing.

A fairly venturesome piece of filmmaking for the era: Based on the Jules Verne story, the film utilizes a dozen cuts, irised lenses, panning shots and vivid tints to weave an intrepid and exciting story.

A Japanese-set magic show. There is a lot of visual trickery on display, ending with an amazing effect using reverse footage and superimposing/projecting images on top of one another.

A sorcerer conjures an old witch and instructs her to seek a maiden. Said maiden is assigned with the task to lure a young traveler inside the castle. Upon his arrival, said traveler is exposed to all sorts of unpleasant surprises. Trouble ensues.

A drunk staggers into his apartment and falls asleep. He dreams he climbs to the top of a building and flies to the moon, then falls back to earth. When he wakes, still drunk, he is in his apartment.

An entomologist guilty of trying to capture rare insects is condemned to be pinned on a giant cork.

A couple steals food from a grocery store. To stop them from repeating their crime, the cunning salesman electrifies his shop.

This has more of a clear narrative than most of the films in the set although it’s still quite odd and random compared to today’s films. There are some effectively surreal and creepy sequences in this imaginative short, such as the devil’s face appearing in an egg and spewing coins as well as the finale where our protagonist is sent to an egg-filled hell.

A young woman becomes pregnant and attempts to provide for her child after the father leaves her.

A man hides his valuables under his mattress before going to sleep, blissfully unaware of the two burglars on his roof.

Two housemaids, arguing, start to fight : a houseboy steps in to separate them, and in doing so becomes their target and is literally torn apart. Alarmed by the quarrel, a policeman intervenes. Will order finally be restored?

The first cinematographic adaptation of the infamous Count Cagliostro.

A prestidigitator, one of the best, is about to perform a number of illusions and brings to his aid a pack of playing cards. He selects the King of Spades, endows him with life and seats him at the table with himself, and they proceed to play a game of cards. The King of Spades shows a disposition to be ugly and is immediately squelched. This is a remarkably good picture, interesting from start to finish.

A young schoolboy sneaks into his father's study while he is out. He discovers a deck of transparent cards and holds some of them up to the lamp, one at a time, and through each one he admires the most suggestive poses of a pretty socialite and witnesses all the charming surprises of a graceful woman's undress.

An old astronomer named Nigadimus has been transfixed by a star for a long time. He had but one thought: to travel to it, to declare his love for it! But how? A simple but ingenious solution-- A giant bubble. An Italian production, this is Velle's longer version of his own film for Pathé, released the same year. It uses similar sets, but different props, as well as a different ending.

The stages that a caterpillar goes through, from larvae to chrysalis, to become a butterfly.

After a quarrel Pedro walks out of the cafe leaving his fiancée (Stacia Napierkowska) alone. Heartbroken, she visits the flower garden and there, flowers metamorphose into women and begin to dance.

Fantastic Flowers is a compilation of short silent films produced between 1906 and 1920, displaying amazing colours that were applied to each frame using the Pathécolor process, or other similar stencilling techniques. Bonsoir – La Fée aux fleurs (1906) / [Bloemenvelden Haarlem] (1909) / Les Chrysanthèmes (1907) / Le Chrysanthème, roi de l’automne (1914) / [Les Tulipes] (1907) / Les Fleurs dans les jardins (1914) / L’Après-midi d’une japonaise (1920) / The Beauty Thief ([1920]) / La Fée printemps (1906) / [Het schoonste uit de natuur] (1912?) / La Culture du dahlia (1911) / [Hollandse Tulpen en Klompen] (1920?) / Fabrication des fleurs artificielles (1911) / [Bonsoir tableau] (1906)