Summoning the Spirits

Summoning the Spirits (Évocation spirite) is an 1899 French silent trick film by Georges Méliès.

Plot
A magician hangs a wreath in the air and makes a grotesque face appear inside it. He then replaces it with a woman's face, and finally with a copy of his own face.

Release and survival
Méliès himself plays the magician in the film. Summoning the Spirits was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 205 in its catalogues, where it was advertised as a scène à transformations.

Méliès burned all the surviving original camera negatives of his films toward the end of his life, and about three-fifths of his output is presumed lost. Summoning the Spirits was among the lost films until 2007, when a copy was identified and restored by the Filmoteca de Catalunya.