Jean Painlevé Movies

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:...

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

An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the...

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

Perrault's fairy tale presented in claymation with choral voices. Bluebeard goes courting, all six of his wives having died. He arrives at the house...

When a wanderer arrives in a village in the East Flanders countryside, strange events begin to unfold. The villagers, unsettled by his presence, come...

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...

This documentary about the life and work of filmmaker Jean Painlevé was originally presented in eight parts on French television. It was...

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...

After a comic introduction, we look closely at a shrimp. Eyes on stilts, color patterns, pinchered walking feet, a rostrum. We watch shrimp eat using...

At a marine biology station, a clump of algae reveals polyps, stomachs with limbs, limbs with buds, buds with poison cells. This animal reproduces by...

A close-up look at sand urchins and rock urchins. At the seashore, a man digs up a sand urchin. We look closely. He sets it back in the sand, and it...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...