Zoological surrealism : the nonhuman cinema of Jean Painlevé / James Leo Cahill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cahill, James Leo, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Painlevé, Jean--Criticism and interpretation.

Painlevé, Jean.

Wildlife films--History and criticism.

Wildlife films.

Wildlife cinematography.

Science films--History and criticism.

Science films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis, Minnesota ; London : University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Summary:

An archive-based, in-depth analysis of the surreal nature and science movies of the pioneering French filmmaker Jean Painlevé. Before Jacques-Yves Cousteau, there was Jean Painlevé, a pioneering French scientific and nature filmmaker with a Surrealist's eye. Creator of more than two hundred films, his studies of strange animal worlds doubled as critical reimaginations of humanity. With an unerring eye for the uncanny and unexpected, Painlevé and his assistant Geneviève Hamon captured oneiric octopuses, metamorphic crustaceans, erotic seahorses, mythic vampire bats, and insatiable predatory insects.

Contents:

Introduction: cinema's Copernican vocation

Neozoological dramas: comparative anatomy by other means

Metamorphoses: crustaceans, the coming of sound, and plasmatic anthropomorphism

Amour flou: the seahorse and the blur of sex

Substitutes, vectors, and the circulatory systems of modernity: Dr. Normet's serum: experimental treatment of a hemorrhage in a dog and the vampire

Carnivorous cinema: freshwater assassins and the blood of the beasts

Conclusion: unfinished revolutions, untimely nature.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

9781452959214

1-4529-5921-8