Jean Painlevé Movies

The film begins with methodical descriptions of one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional space. It then looks at a two-dimensional...

After a look at some strange creatures, the narrator and camera take us to the Chaco forest, on the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, where...

Two kinds of starfish, the brittle and the feather. The brittle star moves its arms alone, without the aid of suckers. Underneath is a single...

An octopus slithers over objects on land—a doll, a skull—then oozes along the shore into the sea. It secretes its ink. The camera follows...

The one-celled long and slender diatom, up close: discovered in 1703 with the invention of the microscope. We observe them magnified 10,000 times:...

Title cards introduce images we watch without narration; they are displays of shape and color. François de Roubaix's electronic music...

An educational film, a movie through a microscope, in two parts. Within minutes after the egg drops in the water, fertilization occurs and...

In a freshwater pond, it's "eat or be eaten." A dragonfly larva eats a midge; a water beetle larva eats a damselfly larva. Snail larvae grow. A...

In close-ups and extreme close-ups, we watch two small species of marine crustaceans, the slender long-legged stenorhynchus and the clumsy,...

An octopus slithers into a narrow crack near the shore; we see its eye up close. It feeds on a crab. In spring it's time to mate. A male grabs a...

In mud flats along the coast of Brittany we watch acera, small ball-shaped mollusks that are about two inches in diameter. They rest in mud; then, in...

An enthusiastic grandfather sits with children in a Parisian park talking about pigeons. First. their physical appearance—eye, wings and tail,...

We begin on planet Earth, with a demonstration of measuring distances using triangulation. Then, an imaginary voyage begins from earth to the moon,...

Jean Painleve short about an experimental canine surgery.

Underwater photography, magnified close-ups, and film through microscope present the sea urchin, a complex creature. We see their mouth and five...

Examines the sea horse, the only fish that swims upright. We watch it use its prehensile tail to wrap around plants and other sea horses. A frontal...

Mathusalem (or Methuselah) is a 1922 play by Ivan Goll, considered a precursor of the theater of the absurd. The 1927 run of the play saw five...

Titles in French and English help us know what we're seeing. In all waters, daphnia abound. They are crustaceans about 2 ml long, with one eye that...