Edwardian Insects on Film(2013)
In 1908, amateur naturalist and pioneering filmmaker Percy Smith stunned early cinema goers with his footage of the juggling fly. Hailed as the father of Natural History film, Smith was a hugely influential visual pioneer, inventing many techniques that are still used today. Being both a genius and an eccentric, we follow his life from his earliest films, to the collapse of his house from his mould experiment to his ultimate suicide. We also meet Natural History icon Sir David Attenborough, who was so amazed by Smith’s films in the 1930s that they inspired him to get into natural history.


Movie: Edwardian Insects on Film
Top 10 Billed Cast
Self - Science Museum, London
Self - Film Archivist
Self - Entomologist
Self - Curator, Silent Film, BFI
Self - Film Archivist
Self - National Media Museum
Self - archive footage
Self - Scientist & Collector
Video Trailer Edwardian Insects on Film
Recommendations Movies

Desert Seas(en)
Sir David Attenborough unveils the two stunning underwater realms of Saudi Arabia - the flamboyant Red Sea and the contrasting hot muddy Gulf, capturing for the first time the rare event of Palolo worms spawning at night.

Swimming in the Sea(fr)
Several little boys run along a pier, then jump into the ocean.

Armageddon Time(en)
In 1980, Queens, New York, a young Jewish boy befriends a rebellious African-American classmate to the disapproval of his privileged family and begins to reckon with growing up in a world of inequality and prejudice.

Lola's Secret(it)
Young man has his dreams come true when the sexy new maid seduces him. But she also has a secret that leads to trouble.

Just the Two of Us(fr)
When Blanche meets Grégoire, she thinks she has found the one. The ties that bind them grow quickly, and a passionate affair ensues. Together, they relocate. For Blanche, far from her family, from her twin sister, Rose, a new life begins. But little by little, she finds herself caught in the grip of a deeply possessive and dangerous man.

Shark Side of the Moon(en)
Decades ago, the USSR developed unkillable sharks and launched them to the moon. Today, a team of American astronauts will endure the fight of their lives.

F/X2(en)
F/X man Rollie Tyler is now a toymaker. Mike, the ex-husband of his girlfriend Kim, is a cop. He asks Rollie to help catch a killer. The operation goes well until some unknown man kills both the killer and Mike. Mike's boss, Silak says it was the killer who killed Mike but Rollie knows it wasn't. Obviously, Silak is involved with Mike's death, so he calls on Leo McCarthy, the cop from the last movie, who is now a P.I., for help and they discover it's not just Silak they have to worry about.

We(en)
Dating within different cultures and being open to all religions, Ethan must deal with constant roadblocks. From First Nations to South American, his journey to find love in Toronto is nothing but complex. He faces discrimination and depression but always remains optimistic.

Before the Rain(mk)
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during the war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.

W.E.(en)
In 1998, an auction of the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor causes great excitement. For one woman, Wally Winthrop, it has much more meaning. Wally becomes obsessed by their historic love story. As she learns more about the sacrifices involved, Wally gains her own courage to find happiness.

The Doll(id)
Anya and Daniel just moved to their new house in Bandung. Daniel brings home a doll from his workplace. Anya, who is a dollmaker, welcomes the doll happily to their house. They later learned that the doll belonged to a little girl named Uci, who died when she and her family were brutally murdered in a robbery. Strange things begin to happen.....

The Price We Pay(en)
After a pawn shop robbery goes askew, two criminals take refuge at a remote farmhouse to try to let the heat die down, but find something much more menacing.

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog(en)
London. A mysterious serial killer brutally murders young blond women by stalking them in the night fog. One foggy, sinister night, a young man who claims his name is Jonathan Drew arrives at the guest house run by the Bunting family and rents a room.

Death Before the Wedding(pl)
When Maja brings her fiancé home, her traditional parents must overcome their cultural biases amidst a crisis at their dairy farm. Can love find a way?

Re-Animated(en)
Part live-action, part animated story about a boy who, after an awful amusement park accident, gets a brain transplant, which allows him to see cartoon characters in real life.

Area of Conflict(en)
Human traffickers wipe out a young girl's family and village. She then seeks revenge on those responsible, eventually becoming first the hunted then turning into the hunters with the mercenary hired to eliminate her.

Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders(en)
A family reunion at a remote mansion takes a lethal turn when they are trapped inside and forced to play a deadly survival game where only one will make it out alive.

The Inhabitant(en)
Like any other teenage girl, Tara is just surviving high school — yet her father and mother seem strangely distant. Amidst a nearby spree of gruesome ax murders, Tara has sightings of terrifying entities, forcing her to question her own sanity and shocking ancestry.
Similar Movies
The Exotic Locations of 'Tomorrow Never Dies'(en)
A tour of the the Exotic Locations of 'Tomorrow Never Dies'.

The Last Sequence(it)
A documentary on Fellini’s lost alternate ending for 8½

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory(fr)
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.

La La La(fr)
When the silent cinema learned to speak, the audience was surprised not only by the voices of the actors and the sound effects, but also by a new element, the music, which, combined with the dance and an unprejudiced imagination, gave rise to a new genre, as important to Hollywood cinema as the western was: the musical. A journey through the history of this genre, from its beginnings to the present day.
Comrades in Dreams(de)
Four lives that could not be more different and a single passion that unites them: the unconditional love for their cinemas, somewhere at the end of the world. Comrades in Dreams brings together six cinema makers from North Korea, America, India and Africa and follows their efforts to make their audiences dream every night.

Bresson: Without a Trace(fr)
An episode of the television program Cinéastes de notre temps in which the director gives his first on-camera interview.

Melville Steps Out of the Shadows(fr)
A documentary about the making of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1949 film "Le silence de la mer"
Advance Australian Film(en)
It's been 20 years since an Australian film has reached number one at the yearly Box Office and our films have consistently grossed under 5% for the years. So what can we do to make a change?

Serbia, Year Zero(fr)
Documentary that follows events after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, while looking back on the previous fifteen years, tracing his rise to power. Personal testimony alternates with analysis of a disintegrating society.

Clawing! A Journey Through the Spanish Horror(es)
In the late sixties, Spanish cinema began to produce a huge amount of horror genre films: international markets were opened, the production was continuous, a small star-system was created, as well as a solid group of specialized directors. Although foreign trends were imitated, Spanish horror offered a particular approach to sex, blood and violence. It was an extremely unusual artistic movement in Franco's Spain.

Love & Loyalty: The Making of 'The Remains of the Day'(en)
The filmmakers and lead actors of The Remains of the Day (1993) discuss how they came to make the film, and the subtle power of its execution.

Running for His Life: The Lawrence Phillips Story(en)
Feature length documentary examining the troubled life and tragic death of college football standout and talented NFL running back Lawrence Phillips, whose scars of childhood abuse and abandonment haunted him throughout his career.

Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr. Hitchcock(en)
When Francois Truffaut approached Alfred Hitchcock in 1962 with the idea of having a long conversation with him about his work and publishing this in book form, he didn't imagine that more than four years would pass before Le Cinéma selon Hitchcock finally appeared in 1966. Not only in France but all over the world, Truffaut's Hitchcock interview developed over the years into a standard bible of film literature. In 1983, three years after Hitchcock's death, Truffaut decided to expand his by now legendary book to include a concluding chapter and have it published as the "Edition définitive". This film describes the genesis of the "Hitchbook" and throws light on the strange friendship between two completely different men. The centrepieces are the extracts from the original sound recordings of the interview with the voices of Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Helen Scott – recordings which have never been heard in public before.

Vivement Truffaut(fr)
A tribute to the late, great French director Francois Truffaut, this documentary was undoubtedly named after his last movie, Vivement Dimanche!, released in 1983. Included in this overview of Truffaut's contribution to filmmaking are clips from 14 of his movies arranged according to the themes he favored. These include childhood, literature, the cinema itself, romance, marriage, and death.

True Bug(fi)
Short documentary about true bugs and humans. Short film is also a compassion practice and small journey from human perspective to other playful ways to see.

A Look at the World of 'Soylent Green'(en)
This promotional short film for "Soylent Green" (1973) begins by showing clips of films that depicted what the future might be like beyond Earth. The narrator then discusses the origin of the idea depicted in "Soylent Green." Director Richard Fleischer and star Charlton Heston discuss how an upcoming crowd scene will be filmed. Then we see what happens when the crowd riots because there is not enough food available to be distributed to everyone. "Soylent Green" was Edward G. Robinson's 101st (and, as it turned out, his last) feature film. During a break in filming, the cast and crew hold a ceremony celebrating the first film of his "second hundred," and Robinson makes appreciative remarks to the crowd. Studio head Jack L. Warner and friend George Burns are among those in attendance.
The Exotic Locations of 'Goldfinger'(en)
A tour of the exotic locations of 'Goldfinger'.