Cinéastes de notre temps : Jean Vigo

The Sounds of the Sounds of Science is a score written by Yo La Tengo for filmmaker Jean Painlevé. It contains 78 minutes of instrumental music to accompany his eight short documentary-style films shot underwater.

The Sounds of Science

The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) have to be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin.