Videofilms about music boxes and automatons

VHS videofilms and DVD all zones

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THE JAQUET-DROZ ANDROIDS (VHS)
In La Chaux-de-Fonds, around 1760... In a watchmaker's workshop, lost in the country in the French-speaking Switzerland... Pierre Jaquet-Droz, an expert in watchmaking and the most renowned specialist in mechanics in Switzerland... A magical book goes and travels through ages... Memories accumulate... A small mechanical family...

The Jaquet-Droz androids is a documentary officially selected by the UNESCO in the framework of the International Festival of Artistic and Educational Films.

THE FEMALE MUSICIAN (VHS)
A musician automaton coming back to life
This film deals with a musician automaton coming back to life, which is rather unusual, either technically or aesthetically speaking. Designed in the 18th century, this automaton was miraculously preserved in the Museum of History and Art in Neuchâtel, situated in French-speaking Switzerland.

The Female Musician is one of the best four documentary films the Union of International Radios and Televisions selected in 1978.

WAIKIKI : THE ENCHANTED PALACE (VHS)
It is a famous music-hall show, intended for children from three years old. It was made with automatons dating back to the 19th century. This interesting initiative led to a very entertaining film with numerous varied acts : clowns, puppets, conjuring, musician automatons... (Le Monde de l'éducation, June 1999).

MARVELLOUS SHIPS: THREE AUTOMATONS (VHS)
Three watchmaking and plate masterpieces, three automaton ships created at the end of the 16th century, are still preserved in three European museums, in Ecouen, London and Vienna. Gathered together for the first time in this film-one of them was exceptionally taken to pieces during the shooting- they tell their story little by little. The film deals with great discovers, somptuous entertainements, curiosities rooms...

ANTIQUE MECHANICAL MUSICS (VHS)
The Baud Museum has a spirit: a collection gathered by a passionnate family whose hobby has been also an occupation for three generations. To be seen: pianos, orchestrions, music boxes, automatons, and so on...a world which vibrates, breathes and lives to the rythm of older times. The ingenious mechanical, musical instruments will astound adults and their mysterious features will fill children with wonder.

INVITATION TO DREAM (VHS)
An imaginary feast at night in the castle of the Monts, where the Locle Museum of Clockmaking stands, and is a pretext for presenting the most beautiful automatons of this collection. Ingenious wonders, these tiny mechanisms are often mounted inside watches. Covered with gold, painted enamel, precious stones, these automatons are moreover plate masterpieces. This film makes them live, play and danse. It unveils, which is a rare show, the intimate secrets of their mechanisms.

IN THE HEART OF TIME, International Clockmaking Museum
Since thousands of years man has been trying to control time's running. Therefore he has expanded a lot of imagination, technical rigor, resourcefulness and creativity. The International Clockmaking Museum of Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, the largest institution of the kind in the world, invites you, through images, to this extraordinary trip into the caverne of running time .

Weight: 250 g

SOLD OUT

REUGE MUSIC - SAINTE -CROIX - SWITZERLAND (VHS)
Reuge Music are happy to present the history and manufacturing of their music boxes as wall as their product range.

JACQUES DE VAUCANSON THE MECHANICAL DREAMS (VHS)
Grenoble, Lyon, Paris in 1738... Jacques de Vaucanson invents, creates and presents to the Academy of Sciences in Paris the three famous automatons "the flutist", "the digesting duck", "the tambourin player" ... who do not exist anymore. Genius has no barriers. Androïds' hands align lines and letters to the rythm of words and drawings, leading the music to the keys of an harpsichord. Jacquet-Droz, from Neuchâtel, will give birth to the mechanical, pneumatic "whistling bird" from Switzerland to China.

ROBERT-HOUDIN, A MAGICIAN'S LIFE (DVD)
The"Théâtre des Soirées Fantastiques" (Theater of fantastic nights), was a conjuror's show which has rarely been perfectly imitated though the improving techniques available to those artists. All the parts in the film are "authentic" ( or remade according to a precise documentation). The "tricks" and the autoamtons appear exactly in the way Robert Houdin himself used to present them, the sceneries and accessories reproducing as truly as possible those of the engravings known today.

Special features :
- Behind-the-scenes secrets of the film
- A visit to a unique and historic Robert-Houdin exhibit in 1998 in Blois
- The Mystery of the Drawing automaton
- "La joueuse de tympanon", 18th century android-automaton restored by Robert-Houdin
- A Visit of Blois on the trail of Robert-Houdin - hosted by Pierre Switon
- A clockmaker unveils the secrets of Rober-Houdin's Singing Lesson and its Mystery clock
- Robert-Houdin slideshow
- 2 hidden special features
- Animated interactive menus/DVD in english and french/all zones.

1796: THE GREAT HISTORY OF THE MUSIC BOX (VHS)
This film presents the evolution of the mechanical music, specially emphasizing on the mavellous world made of music boxes and automatons. Featuring: the beginnings, the arrival of comb music, the industrialization in Geneva then in Sainte-Croix, the developping, the birth of a music box, disc music, singing birds, automatons, the industry of this marvellous world, the visit of the main museums.

MARVELLOUS AND SPLENDID MUSIC BOXES (VHS)
This film essentially deals with disc and punch card music boxes and was produced in the framework of the greatest European exhibition of the kind from July, 1st 1998 to 10 January, 1999 at the Museum of the CIMA (International Center of Mechanical Arts in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland)

IN THE LAND OF THE MUSIC BOXES AND AUTOMATONS (VHS)
In Sainte-Croix, small town in Vaudesian Jura, located about thousand meter high and near the French barrier, the manufacturing of music boxes has been carried on for more than a century despite fashions and economic crises. Attracted by the know-how of the inhabitants of this region, a creator and restaurator of automatons settled in 1973 in Bullet, neighbor town of Sainte-Croix. With his help and his aprentice, the land of music boxes has become the land of automatons too.