The new BFI DVD of the surreally beautiful films of scientific filmmaker Jean Painlevé, Science is Fiction, looks marvellous just by itself, but for lovers of early scientific films (there are a handful of us) the DVD also includes Percy Smith‘s The Birth of a Flower (1910) and The Strength and Agility of Insects (1911, though this is actually the retitled The Balancing Bluebottle from 1908), with its cork-juggling flies.