Product Details

• Actors: N, a
• Directors: Jean Painleve
• Format: Box set, Black & White, Color, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
• Language: French
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 3
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Criterion Collection
• DVD Release Date: April 21, 2009
• Run Time: 313 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001PYD0LG
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,264 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painleve" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Jean Painlevé was a film director, critic, theorist, and animator, yet his interests and studies also extended to mathematics, medicine, and zoology. Amazingly, all these disparate strands came together in a groundbreaking, decades-spanning artistic career. Operating under the credo: Science is fiction, Painlevé forged his own unique cinematic path, creating countless short films for both the viewing public and the scientific community. Moreover, he was also one of the first filmmakers to take his camera underwater. Surreal, otherworldly documents of marine life, these films transformed sea horses, octopi, and mollusks into delicate dancers in their own floating ballets. This anthology features twenty-three of Painlevé's shorts in their original form, as well as Yo La Tengo's ninety-minute original score The Sounds of Science, written in 2001 to accompany eight of the director's films.

THREE-DISC SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New, restored digital transfers
The Sounds of Science, an original score by Yo La Tengo to Jean Painlevé's films, plus an interview with the band
More than two hours of interviews with the filmmaker, drawn from the eight-part television series Jean Painlevé au fils de ses films, directed by Denis Derrien and Hélène Hazera
New and improved English subtitle translations
PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film scholar Scott MacDonald and notes on all the films by Painlevé

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Art and Science! April 23, 2009

By Leif Adams

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)

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars TRUTH IS BEAUTY IS TRUTH April 22, 2009

By Kerry Leimer VINE™ VOICE

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent series of films by Jean Painlevé. May 18, 2009

By Ted VINE™ VOICE

Amazon Verified Purchase

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!