Long-Lost Georges Méliès Film Discovered in Michigan Garage, Digitized by Library of Congress

A century-old trunk stored in a Grand Rapids, Michigan garage held a rare cinematic treasure: a lost 1897 film by French pioneer Georges Méliès. Bill McFarland, who inherited the trunk from his great-grandfather, an itinerant showman in rural western Pennsylvania, donated ten nitrate reels to the U.S. Library of Congress after museums and antique stores refused them due to fire hazards. Specialists at the Library's National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia identified one 45-second reel as Méliès's Gugusse and the Automaton, unseen for over a century, by a black star painted on the screen from his Star Film company. The film, featuring Méliès as a magician battling a robot clown, represents the earliest known moving image of a robot and explores themes of inventor control. McFarland's donation also included Méliès's The Fat and Lean Wrestling Match (1900) and fragments of Thomas Edison's The Burning Stable (1896). Georges Méliès, inspired by the Lumière Brothers' 1895 Paris screening, produced over 500 films, innovating techniques like double exposure, though many were destroyed for World War I materials. About 300 of his works survive, with 60 held in the Library's refrigerated vault to prevent nitrate fires. The Library has digitized Gugusse and made it publicly available, with vault leader George Willeman noting the collection's significance upon arrival.