De-Bugged

Vosička Aphelinus Mali

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.

Struggling with a mid-life crisis, Robert Oelman leaves his psychology career in the early 1990s to photograph rare and exotic insects. After moving from the United States to Colombia, he forms a special bond with his subjects in the Amazon rainforest. This connection enables him to make striking photographic images of new and undocumented species. After more than 20 years of traveling, searching, and photographing, his quest culminates with a New York City gallery show where he finally shares his images with the public.

In this playful essay film, the filmmaker investigates our culture's discomfort with all things many-legged.

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

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.

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

Ages before man proclaimed himself a superior being, the tiny ant had developed the art of agriculture — a practice which was later to be the backbone of human society.

A story about survival, belief in the physical memory of things, as if still-life was always part of the scientific possibility or of the nightmare of extinction.

UNIVERSUM cameraman Wolfgang Thaler and Bert Hoelldobler, a leading authority on ants, bring us face-to-face with the mysterious world of these social insects.

This short film takes a look through a microscope's lens at insect life.

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.

Das große Insektensterben

Insekten, Superhelden auf sechs Beinen

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

Insecticide, mon amour

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.

Collar de moscas

Story of the Silk Moth

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.