Death by Design: Where Parallel Worlds Meet
Staff Picks
•
1h 10m
Directed by Peter Friedman, JF Brunet • Documentary • With Martin Raff, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Robert Horvitz, Pierre Golstein, Polly Matzinger, Klaus-Michael Debatin • 1995 • 70 minutes
There exists a world where death creates life, where suicides without sadness occur billions of times an hour, where every individual does exactly what is required by the society as a whole. It is a world of highly sophisticated communication, of vast depth and endless mystery. It is utterly alien, yet it is also, in every moment, creating us all. Death by Design is a guided tour of the invisible world of our cells, told through a collage of metaphors. State-of-the-art micro-cinematography is playfully intercut with parallel images from life at the human scale: a hundred lighted violins, imploding buildings, pieces of film on the cutting room floor. Our scientist-guides include two Nobel prizewinners, Rita Levi-Montalcini and Robert Horvitz.
“Intelligent and imaginative. . .inventively choreographed images. . .surprising, revealing metaphors for what the program rightly boasts is "a cast of billions”. —The New York Times
Up Next in Staff Picks
-
Bright Future
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Joe Odagiri, Tatsuya Fuji, Tadanobu Asano • 2003 • 115 minutes
"Casts its spell by drawing out the horror of everyday existence bit by bit, and then tossing in some otherworldly weirdness that makes the hair on the back of your neck try to run for cove...
-
A Man Vanishes
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1967 • 130 minutes
One of the most important and complex works by two-time Palme d'Or winning director Shohei Imamura, A MAN VANISHES begins as an investigation into one of the thousands of missing persons cases that occur in Japan each year.
The film ...
-
A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker)
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1977 • 178 minutes
Newly restored! A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is Chris Marker's epic film-essay on the worldwide political wars of the 60's and 70's: Vietnam, Bolivia, May '68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left.
Released in France in 1978, restored a...
