Ants - Nature's Secret Power

Tenório

A Documentary on the Creation of OVO, by Cirque du Soleil

A scientist explains how the savagery and efficiency of the insect world could result in their taking over the world.

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Luis Buñuel’s observation – “You can find all of Shakespeare and de Sade in the lives of insects” – was the inspiration for this experimental horror movie, in which human actors wordlessly enact the life-cycles of wasps and bees. Its purpose is to depict with emotion, humor and unnerving specificity an alternative society that really exists and has nothing to do with human beings. A highly stylized depiction of nature in all her deceitful glory.

The World's Biggest and Baddest Bugs, follows host Ruud Kleinpaste, as he embarks on an entomological odyssey around the globe in search of the ultimate biggest and "baddest" creepy crawlies. The World's Biggest and Baddest Bugs will then profile the "stars" of the show, with Ruud explaining in his audience-friendly style exactly what makes them so amazing.

A documentary showing the lives of an worker ant colony.

Untangling the web of cultural and historical ties underlying Japan's deep fascination with insects.

Krieg der Ameisen

Sir David Attenborough is in the Swiss Jura Mountains to discover the secrets of a giant. Beneath his feet lies a vast network of tunnels and chambers, home to a huge empire of ants. It is believed to be one of the largest animal societies in the world, where over a billion ants from rival colonies live in peace.

In 1908, amateur naturalist and pioneering filmmaker Percy Smith stunned early cinema goers with his footage of the juggling fly. Hailed as the father of Natural History film, Smith was a hugely influential visual pioneer, inventing many techniques that are still used today. Being both a genius and an eccentric, we follow his life from his earliest films, to the collapse of his house from his mould experiment to his ultimate suicide. We also meet Natural History icon Sir David Attenborough, who was so amazed by Smith’s films in the 1930s that they inspired him to get into natural history.

Perturbation

La vispa Teresa (“Lively Theresa”) is based on a well known song; a girl, ten, catches a butterfly and all the other insects intervene to save it.

City of Wax is a 1934 American short documentary film produced by Horace and Stacy Woodard about the life of a bee. It won the Oscar at the 7th Academy Awards in 1935 for Best Short Subject (Novelty). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2007.

Satoshi Kuribayashi and his team filmed the insects for over an astonishing 430 days, resulting in breathtaking images and scenes from a still fairly unknown world. Watch a mantis sneak up on its prey and catch it with its razor sharp claws. Experience a deadly, thrilling wasp fight. Sit back and watch the world of the insects unfold before you like you have never experienced it before.

The Hidden World is a 1958 American science documentary film produced by Robert Snyder and narrated by Gregory Peck. The film is about insects. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Propped upon the tail-end of a match, a housefly performs astonishing feats, alternately juggling a series of objects - a blade of grass, a cork, a miniature dumbbell… Most extraordinary of all is the sequence in which the fly spins a ball twice its own size, while a second fly perches on top. In the final sequence, the fly repeats some of its earlier tricks while apparently seated on a tiny chair.

Das große Insektensterben

Ant colonies are one of the wonders of nature: complex, organised… and mysterious. This programme reveals the secret, underground world of the ant colony, in a way that’s never been seen before. At its heart is a massive, full-scale ant nest, specially designed and built to allow cameras to see its inner workings. The nest is a new home for a million-strong colony of leafcutter ants from Trinidad. For a month, entomologist Dr George McGavin and leafcutter expert Prof Adam Hart capture every aspect of the life of the colony, using time-lapse cameras, microscopes, microphones and radio tracking technology. The programme explores how these tiny insects can achieve such spectacular feats of collective organisation. It also reveals the workings of one of the most complex and mysterious societies in the natural world – and shows the surprising ways in which ants are helping us solve global problems.

Groenkijkers