Underplayed Gems

Powers of Ten (1968)

Powers of Ten poster
Directed by
Ray Eames, Charles Eames
Genre
documentary film, popular science film
Country
United States
Runtime
9 min
Rating
7.7 of 10 from 82 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This short film uses a camera to zoom out from a sleeping man in a park to the edge of the known universe and then zoom back in to the level of a single atom. It shows how big and small things are by changing the view by a factor of ten every ten seconds.

contemplativeeducationalawe-inspiringcalmexpansivescientificmeditativestructured

What happens

The Powers of Ten are two short American documentary films written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames. Both works depict the relative scale of the universe according to an order of magnitude (or logarithmic scale) based on a factor of ten, first expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is surveyed, then reducing inward until a single atom and its quarks are observed. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.