Jean Painleve’s Underwater Wonders January 25, 2013

Friday, January 25 – 7:30 PM
JEAN PAINLEVE’S UNDERWATER WONDERS
Long before anyone had ever heard of Jacques Cousteau, French filmmaker Jean Painlevé was documenting life underwater. A founding father of the nature film, he and partner Genevieve Hamon made more than 200 shorts in a career spanning five decades. Created for entertainment purposes as much as scientific ones, Painlevé’s films often paired visuals of strange sea creatures with classical, jazz or avant garde music, and were quite popular in the pre-WWII surrealist community. Join us for an evening of these inventive films featuring new restorations of “Spider Crabs and Macropodia (Hyas and Stenorhynchus)” (1927, 18 min.), “The Sea Horse” (1933, 13 min.), the clay-animation “Blue Beard” (1938, 13 min.), “Freshwater Assassins” (1947, 25 min.), “Sea Urchins” (1954, 11 min.), “Sea Ballerinas” (1956, 14 min.), “Shrimp Stories” (1964, 10 min.), “The Love Life of the Octopus” (1967, 13 min.) and “Diatoms” (1968, 17 min.).

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