DNA
1969 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Bané Jovanovic
Genres: animation, documentary
Tones: contemplative
Colour animation explains DNA, the molecule controlling protein production and transmitting inherited characteristics, including how mutations occur.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1969 educational animation about DNA should be a snooze, but Jovanovic's refusal to condescend—treating molecular biology with the same visual weight as abstract cinema—makes it quietly defiant in ways the film itself probably didn't intend.
This sits beautifully in the lineage of post-war scientific visualization as art form; the formal restraint and chromatic precision recall the pedagogical aesthetics of the National Film Board's golden era, where explanation became its own kind of visual argument.
The decision to render heredity and mutation through pure color shifts rather than literal genetic diagrams—letting hue do the work of explanation—is the economy move that transforms a science film into something that feels almost meditative.