• PROGRAMME
• SYNOPSES

Termites attack

1. Author: Thierry Berrod, Quincy Russell
2. Director: Thierry Berrod
3. Editor: Gerard Bernasconi, Julien Berrod
4. Photography: Pascal Goetgheluck
5. Music: Gilbert Grilli
6. Starring:
   Immagini al microscopio elettronico / Electronic microscope images
   Marc Peters, Jean Jacques Dupuy, Daniel Bultreys
7. Production: Mona Lisa Prod in coprod. con France 2, a Cinquième, IRD, CNRS
8. France
9. 52 min.
10. 2001

From more than one hundred million years, termites exploit the Earth and its resources giving a proof of an extraordinary ability of adaptation. Shot in Côte d’Ivoire and in the Central African Republic, this film explores the different varieties of termites existing the world over.
If European and North American termites are not to be considered real enemies of men, African and Australian ones, in spite of the damages they cause to the crops, play a really different role.
In these places, termites are used, for example, as “physicians”: doctor Ndonazi, in the Central African Republic, treats ulcers with “termites-paste”.
With their various biology, termites charm the scientists. Some scientists study their stomach to find the ideal bacterium for the fight against pollution; someone else consider them as real soil ecosystems.
This documentary is part of a series awarded with a number of prizes, Squatters, of which our festival shown three titles in the past editions. With the use of the technique of electronic microscopy and synthetic tridimensional images, it explores on a microscopic scale the world of revolting insects, revolting for the most of us, but that can be very useful too.

Awarded a prize at the festivals of: Obidos, Villa Real, Bratislava, Prague, Berlin, Rabat