Science Is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painleve.

Science Is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painleve, edited at Andy Masaki Bellows and Marina McDougall with Brigitte Berg (MIT Press) redemptions from history's editing-room floor the delightful scientific documentaries of French filmmaker Jean Painleve (1902-89) Octopi, water fleas, and vampire bats are just a scarcely any of the stars of Painleves 200-plus film studies. His lyrical approach to science enraptured his Surrealist contemporaries, cot Painleve was no common egghead; he raced cars professionally, participated in the Resistance, played poker with the Surrealists, have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing ofed the tribulations of a field-working marine biologist, and uniform got to direct Artaud. His films are discourses upon the uncanny essence of nature: male seahorses giving birth, crustaceans decorating themselves with living camouflage, mollusks locomoting with a flamenco dance. Each film is as fantastical as it is factual.

Mark Dion is an artist who lives and works in Pennsylvania.

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