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On permanent and prominent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic masterwork the Mona Lisa (1503-17) is protected by bulletproof glass, illuminated by a customised LED lamp and seen by some 6 million people a year, making it the most visited work of art in the world. In 2017, that means it’s also the most photographed. After all, in the selfie age, did you even experience it if you didn’t come away with your own quick snap? Assembled from hundreds of images collected from Instagram, Mona Lisa Selfie is a clever reflection on what a personal picture of a hyper-famous work of art means in the digital era.
Director: Daniel McKee
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Family life
The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them
21 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
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War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
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History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
19 minutes
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Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes