An exuberant Oscar-winning film on glass-blowing, automation and all that jazz
Glas won the master filmmaker Bert Haanstra a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Short Documentary in 1959. The film contrasts the production of handmade crystal from the Royal Leerdam glass factory with automated bottle-making machines in the Netherlands. An industrial film with a bebop heart, its lyrical use of light and sound still looks and sounds fabulous, some 60 years after it was made.
Producer and Director: Bert Haanstra
videoMedicine
Drinking wine from toxic cups was the 17th century’s own dubious ‘detox’ treatment
11 minutes
videoEngineering
How water-based clocks revolutionised the way we measure time
10 minutes
videoEnvironmental history
In Kazakhstan, ‘atomic lakes’ still scar the landscape decades after Soviet nuclear tests
13 minutes
videoArchitecture
A 3D rendering of the Colosseum captures its architectural genius and symbolic power
17 minutes
videoMaking
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
videoNature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
videoHistory of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
videoDesign and fashion
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery
14 minutes
videoInformation and communication
‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph
36 minutes