The Hellstrom Chronicle (Ed Spiegel and Walon Green, 1971)

The Hellstrom Chronicle
(Ed Spiegel and Walong Green, 1971, 90 min, USA, English, Digital)

"Perhaps one of the strangest films to ever win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) portrays in stunning (and sometimes disgusting) detail, a war we did not know we were fighting: the struggle between humankind and the insects that are determined to take over the planet. Director Walon Green and his team of cinematographers macro-photographed the vicious insect world with microscopic and telescopic lenses, and sometimes in stop-motion ... Stringing this parade of violence, seduction, and survival together is Dr. Nils Hellstrom, a fictitious entomologist played by Lawrence Pressman. Banished from the scientific community for choosing insects over mankind and attempting to aid in their inevitable domination, Hellstrom’s narration and contextualization injects each scene with an extra potent dose of ecological horror. Although satirical, the film’s “thesis”: that mankind is too ignorant and individualistic to survive, ultimately doesn’t seem so ridiculous." – Stephanie Monohan, Screen Slate

"[T]he most extraordinary film which alternates the stunningly beautiful with the intensely ugly so tantalisingly that you begin to wonder which is which." – The Guardian

"[A] deliciously hyperbolic insect study that marries beautiful microphotography with a Herzogian view of nature as a deceptively idyllic stage that sings with the relentless harmony of murder."
– Scott Tobias, AV Club