Living Dead Frogs & Acrobatic Flies: Survivances from the Past in the First Scientific Films

Abstract

Crossing centuries Lives in a drop of water, Anguillulae Aceti and Fresh-water Hydras; living dead frogs, ten feet tall fleas and well-trained flies; bow-tied chemists, barker-like scientists and Scientia… a whole popular science series that borrows the name from a luna park stand. In aiming at the objective visualization of a pure phenomenon, scientific film is supposed to be free from any history, any tradition, any (linguistic) heritage, any intertextuality. It is surprising to find out that it is not always true. By the “instructive amusement” imperative which first popular science series borrowed from Positivism, it seems then to get the grips with some survivances of dusty fairground stands, of maravigliosi optical games, of evolving cabinets de physique. Can scientific film show how cinema has remediated its ancestors? Can it teach us something about the unsuspected love of the 1920s avant-garde for the past, about their “dialectical” tension?

Keywords

• visual culture
• scientific cinema
• popular science
• remediation
• avant-garde