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315 min
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Jean Painlevé’s “Ten Commandments”
Next week, we release a definitive, three-disc set of the short documentaries of Jean Painlevé (1902–89), the pioneering French scientist-educator-filmmaker (and sometime Dadaist) whose mesmerizing studies of marine life, especially, have been attracting wide audiences and new fans for decades (including the rock band Yo La Tengo, which regularly performs with the films, and whose eight-film score is included on the release). By way of an introduction to this truly unique artist, we present his “Ten Commandments,” originally published in the notes accompanying his touring “Poets of the Documentary” program in 1948. On first glance, they may seem simple enough, but once you’ve watched the films, many more layers of meaning will become evident. On the second commandment, for instance, “one might wonder how scientifically informed nature films can be said to express convictions,” film scholar Scott MacDonald muses in his essay for the release, “but it is precisely Painlevé’s implicit (and sometimes explicit) reasons for selecting the organisms he does and his manner of presenting them that reveal his attitudes.” Among those attitudes seems to be an interest in confronting conventional ideas about gender, MacDonald writes, evident in his films on sea horses (male and female collaborate on child birthing), daphnia (self-reproducing females), starfish (hermaphroditic), and the stunning AceraFantasia.”
Here are all ten of Painlevé’s filmmaking convictions, practiced over six decades and more than two hundred luminous films:
1. You will not make documentaries if you do not feel the subject.
2. You will refuse to direct a film if your convictions are not expressed.
3. You will not influence the audience by unfair means.
4. You will seek reality without aestheticism or ideological apparatus.
5. You will abandon every special effect that is not justified.
6. Trickery will be of no use unless the audience is your confidant.
7. You will not use clever editing unless it illustrates your good intentions.
8. You will not show monotonous sequences without perfect justification.
9. You will not substitute words for images in any way.
10. You will not be content with “close enough” unless you want to fail spectacularly. (bisexual), which, when mating, “do a kind of ballet during which the cloaks that encircle their bodies fly open, evoking tutus.” Painlevé’s film about these last creatures, notes MacDonald, is “reminiscent of moments from Oskar Fischinger films and from Disney’s
Jean Painlevé(1902-89)
Going Beneath the Surface
Yo La Tengo
The Sounds of Science
[Original Score]
Probably no substantial dimension of film history has been so thoroughly ignored by American film critics, historians, and theorists as the nature film (or wildlife film): These short documentaries of Jean Painlevé (190289), the pioneering French scientist-educator-filmmaker (and sometime Dadaist) whose mesmerizing studies of marine life, especially, have been attracting wide audiences and new fans for decadesSurrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science.The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the octopus.The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) have to be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films.New and improved English subtitle translations from the eight-part television series, "Jean Painlevé: Through His Films"Directed by Denis Derrien and Hélène Hazera
When OCTOPUSES reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity.The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen.The female does not eat during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother dies and the young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to sink down to the bottom of the ocean, where the cycle repeats itself. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; as they become part of the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to many plankton eaters.
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Cephalopoda
Subclass: Coleoidea
Superorder: Octopodiformes
Order: Octopoda * Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus * Subclass Coleoidea o Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish o Superorder Octopodiformes + Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid + Order Octopoda # Genus †Keuppia (incertae sedis) # Genus †Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis) # Genus †Pohlsepia (incertae sedis) # Genus †Proteroctopus (incertae sedis) # Genus †Styletoctopus (incertae sedis) # Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus * Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus * Family Cirroteuthidae * Family Stauroteuthidae # Suborder Incirrina * Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus * Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus * Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus * Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus * Superfamily Argonautoida o Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus o Family Argonautidae: argonauts o Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus o Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
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