Jean Painlevé Movies

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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...

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...

Alexander Calder created and performed one of the most important and beloved works, his miniature circus (1926-1931). More than twenty years later...

Shot primarily by twelve French cameramen (led by filmmakers Jean Painlevé and Jean Grémillon), in August 1944, this film captures the...

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:...

Jean Painlevé short film examining proportion and its effects on organisms.