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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
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Music
‘Dun dun dun duuun!’ Why Beethoven’s Fifth sticks in the head and stirs the heart
5 minutes
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Art
The irreverent duo who thumbed their noses at the Soviet Union and the US art world
11 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’
9 minutes
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Future of technology
Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system
6 minutes
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Fairness and equality
A tragicomic account of how the Los Angeles Police Department blew up a city block
19 minutes
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Stories and literature
A French Creole folktale nearly lost to time is given new, gorgeously animated life
6 minutes
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Food and drink
Is a ‘gastronomic society’ dinner the height of decadence, or an act of artistry?
11 minutes
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Deep time
When algae met fungi – the hidden story of life’s most successful partnership
4 minutes
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Personality
Why cleaning up crime scenes requires a rare mix of grit and empathy
9 minutes