Cosmic Zoom
A Film Review.
Cosmic Zoom is a short film made in 1968 directed by Eva Szasz. It is produced by National Film Board of Canada. It depicts the relative size of everything in the universe in an 8-minute sequence. It is been broadcasted by ABC in the fall of 1971 as part of the children’s television show Curiosity Shop.
This film is based upon the 1957 essay Cosmic View by Kees Boeke. As a Dutch educator Kees Boeke has written lot of material and made graphics to explore many levels of size and structure. He explored the universe from astronomically vast aspect to the atomically tiny part. This Assay published in 1957, the film begins with a simple photograph of a Dutch girl sitting outside her school and holding a cat. Film first backs up from the original photo, with graphics that include more and more of the vast reaches of space in which the girl is located. The essay then narrows in on the original picture, with graphics that show ever smaller areas until the nucleus of a sodium atom is reached. The written commentary by Mr. Boeke on each graphic, along with introductory and concluding notes helped director.
The concept of universe and the scale later shaped many movies and literature from all over the world. Men in black, Armagadon, Matrix etc. are few examples of the topic,
The cinematic use of camera and graphics amalgam with artifacts and explores the yet another dimension of our imagination. If you weren't one of those lucky enough to see this as a child, then you missed out on a vivid memory that all those who did seem to recall with great fondness and not a little awe. It occasionally turned up on television during the seventies and early eighties to amaze the unwary,
We see the whole of our solar system pass by, with a close move towards Mars and a glimpse of Saturn in the distance, but that's not all, as we become aware we are looking at our entire galaxy - then finally the entire universe. At this point the music, by Pierre Brault, stops and suddenly runs backwards as we "zoom" back the way we've been, faster and faster until we return to the shot of the boy in the boat. But it doesn't end there, as the scale of the universe is juxtaposed with the scale of a molecule in a blood cell being sucked out of the boy's hand by a mosquito - mind-bending to say the least. Then we return to the boy on the lake, who continues rowing... if he is not aware of his place in creation, then we are thanks to the vast perspective the film has given us. As a whole the experience runs barely eight minutes, but a longer version might have been too much too handle.
As a writer Boeke tried to renovate education by letting children in on decisions concerning school. He let decisions be made unanimously. He called this process sociocracy. Boeke's system of sociocracy survives today and was expanded upon in the work of a well-known student of the school, Dr. Gerard Endenburg, who in the 1960s and '70s developed a governance and decision-making methodology by the same name while directing the Endenburg Electrotechniek company.
Director crafted this film in a simple map of the known universe easy enough for a child to understand, this is a fascinating science based short which travels to the farthest point in space and back to the smallest particle. Starting with live action film of a boy rowing a boat, the frame freezes and changes to accurate science style drawings as the camera slowly zooms out until we see the lake, North America, planet earth, the moon, the solar system , the milky way and the galaxy. From distant space the camera then moves back in to the boy in the boat again and keeps going closer until we see a mosquito on his hand, then the insects head, down through the skin to the sub atomic level, before coming back out to the boy on the boat who continues rowing across the lake.
Cosmic Zoom is one of those shorts that captures the imagination and sticks in the mind of everyone that sees it, especially children and late night student crowds, providing a mind-blowing mental map of the entire Universe.
Strangely, another similarly great little film was made from the same subject matter in the same year, ‘Powers of Ten’, directed by designers Ray and Charles Eames. This starts on a picnic scene ten meters square and zooms out, in scales of ten to the power of one, ten to the power of two etc. This film is possibly better known than ‘Cosmic Zoom’ as it is made by famous American designers. Another similar film was made for IMAX cinemas in 1996 entitled ‘Cosmic Voyage’, which although made with high definition CGI, lacks the hand crafted charm of the originals.
