The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax"
The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax" | |
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Directed by | Georges Méliès |
Production company | |
Release dates | 1902 |
![](../I/m/Le_ballon_dirigeable_Pax.jpeg)
The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax" (French: Catastrophe du Ballon Le Pax) was a 1902 short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 398 in its catalogues.[1]
The film is a recreation of a real-life catastrophe that occurred in Paris on 12 May 1902.[2] At 5 a.m. on that day, the Brazilian inventor Augusto Severo de Albuquerque Maranhão and his mechanic, M. Saché, set off in Severo's dirigible, the Pax. They intended to fly from Paris to Issy-les-Moulineaux. However, while the aeronauts were still over Paris at about 400 meters' altitude, the motor stopped and the dirigible exploded. Both Severo and Saché were killed.[3]
The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax" is the second-to-last of Méliès's "reconstructed newsreels" (staged re-enactments of current events), made between The Eruption of Mount Pelee and The Coronation of Edward VII.[4] It is currently presumed lost.[1]
See also
References
- 1 2 Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 344, ISBN 9782732437323
- ↑ Malthête & Mannoni 2008, p. 28
- ↑ Lecornu, Joseph Louis (1903), La navigation aérienne: histoire, documentation et anecdotique, Paris: Nony, pp. 465–467, retrieved 6 December 2014
- ↑ Rosen, Miriam (1987), "Méliès, Georges", in Wakeman, John, World Film Directors: Volume I, 1890–1945, New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, p. 755