1927 | France | Documentary

Les Oursins (The Sea Urchins)

  • French - 10 mins
  • Director | Jean Painleve
  • Writer | -
  • Producer | -

STATUS: Released

This film is currently not available.   

In the sea urchin, the most astonishing thing is on the shell. If you glance over it with a distracted thought, you only see an impenetrable forest; then you can make out some quills that move. But let's delve deeper into the forest and enlarge it. Around the quills that have become Doric columns, we discover another, smaller forest, shrubs. These are pedicellariae, tiny organs belonging to the sea urchin. A calcareous stem ending in three jaws that muscles perpetually close and open. Some pedicellariae have long, thin, openwork jaws. In others, they evoke, powerful and close-knit, snake heads... "Les Oursins" was for me an architectural film, there was a whole series of very beautiful structures there, extraordinary colonnades. I don't want to speak ill of Buren's columns, but the columns of the sea urchins were at least as important.

Sea Urchin Underwater Architecture Nature Pedicellariae Marine Life
Film Organizations
Les Documents Cinématographiques
LABORATORY
Playlists