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Invited to a festival, film-maker Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) was
assured that the organiser would avoid using the word “scientific” in describing
his films. “Avant-garde” was a far better word. So what exactly was
Painlevé filming? As editors Andy Masaki Bellows, Marina McDougall and
Brigitte Berg show in Science is Fiction, Painlevé was one of
the first to popularise science films and also to film underwater. He hung out
with the great Jean Vigo, drove fast cars and made spectacularly beautiful films
about seahorses giving birth, water fleas and octopuses. And he understood his
audience, making three separate versions of his…