Customer Reviews

Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painleve

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Seeing as this is a Criterion release, I thought I would just talk a few specs...

Great transfers!
Booklet on the light side, one good essay.
Sound great!
Pretty packaging in a sturdy 3-disc* plastic binder.
*1 DVD on left with book, 2 DVD on right.

No one has posted a list of the films included yet...

So...

Included in this set are:

POPULAR FILMS
-Hyas and Stenorhynchus (BLACK & WHITE)
-Sea Urchins (COLOR)
-Liquid Crystals (COLOR)
-The Sea Horse (BLACK & WHITE)
-The Love Life of the Octopus (COLOR)
-Shrimp Stories (COLOR)
-Acera (COLOR)
-The Vampire (BLACK & WHITE)
-Freshwater Assassins (BLACK & WHITE)
-Sea Ballerinas (COLOR)
-Diatoms (COLOR)
-Pigeons in the Square (COLOR)

THE SOUND OF SCIENCE
-Eight Films with Original Score by Yo La Tengo (BLACK & WHITE) (COLOR)


EARLY POPULAR SILENT FILMS
-The Octopus (BLACK & WHITE)
-Sea Urchin (BLACK & WHITE)
-Daphnia (BLACK & WHITE)


SILENT RESEARCH FILMS
-The Stickleback's Egg (BLACK & WHITE)
-Experimental Treatment of a Hemorrhage In a Dog (BLACK & WHITE)


FILMS FOR LE PALAIS DE LA DECOUVERTE
-The Fourth Dimension (BLACK & WHITE)
-The Struggle for Survival (BLACK & WHITE)
-Voyage to the Sky (BLACK & WHITE)
-Similarities Between Length and Speed (BLACK & WHITE)

ANIMATION
-Bluebeard (COLOR)

JEAN PAINLEVE THROUGH HIS FILMS
-8 Part French Television Series (BLACK & WHITE)(COLOR)

For those of us generally fatigued by the apparent cultural and commercial compulsion to identify genre; to separate the ideas of "art" and "science" and "life" into discrete, highly defined clots, there is the work of Jean Painleve. In addition to pioneering entirely new techniques in revealing many things previously unseen, Painleve's images are startling in their content and composition, transcending the purely documentary by the application of an aesthetic sense as refined as the nature it observes. Droll, playful and informative on multiple levels, these films are so immersive as to be literally saturated. With color. With image. With detail. With ideas. With associations. With knowledge. Criterion has done us all a service by placing this work within easy reach, ready to continually remind us of how compelling just being can be.

This DVD set from the Criterion Collection contains 23 of Jean Painlevé's films. 22 of them are documentaries and 1 of them is a stop-motion animated fairy tale. Many of the documentaries are about marine life. The titles are usually self-explanatory.

The films on disc one are:

Hyas and Stenrhynchus, (Hyas et Stenorinques)
Sea Urchins (Ourisns) 1954
How Some Jellyfish Are Born (Comment Naissent Des Méduses)
Liquid Crystals (Christaux Liquides)
The Sea Horse (L'Hippocampe)
The Love Life of an Octopus (Les Amours de la Pieuvre)
Shrimp Stories (Histoires de Crevettes)
ACERA, or The Witches' Dance (Acera ou le Bal Des Sorcières) - (a film about the locomotion of various animals)
The Vampire (Le Vampire) (a film about the vampire bat)
Diatoms (Diatomées)
Pigeons in the Square (Les Pigeons du Square)

Disc two contains
The Octopus (La Pieuvre)
Sea Urchins (Les Ourisins) 1928
Daphnia (La Daphnie)
The Stickleback's Egg (L'uf D'Épinoche)
Experimental Treatment of a Hemorrhage in a Dog (Traitement Expérimental d'une Hémorragie Che le Chien
The Fourth Dimension (La Quatrième Dimension)
The Struggle for Survival (Images Mathénatiques de la Lutte Pour la Vie)
Voyage to the Sky (Voyage Dans Le Ciel)
Similarities Between Length and Speed (Similitudes Des Longueurs et des Vitesses)
Bluebeard (Barbe-Bleue)

Disc three contains a French miniseries documentary of interviews with Painlevé.

The Bluebeard film is the only non-documentary.

As an added bonus, there is an optional soundtrack of music composed by Yo La Tengo, specifically for 8 of the films in this release, and an interview with members of Yo La Tengo.

This is a great release and has some excellent films. I learned a lot watching this!

If you're a nature or wildlife enthusiast this collection is a must-have for you. With so many of Painleve's short films, this DVD collection provides endless hours of pleasure. I especially enjoyed the Sounds of Science section, which is eight of Painleve's short films with an ambient rock soundtrack by band Yo La Tengo. The music seems to enhance the hypnotic quality of the images presented in the documentaries. Although some of the narration and title cards border on the ludicrous, Painleve nontheless offers unforgettable and mesmerizing images and you're left wondering about the amazing techniques used to capture them.