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.