Wildscreen: Small Talk Diaries

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Wildscreenings: Families Triple Bill 2 (PG)

Using a secret (fictional) invention called theTranslation Lens, the myriad of minibeasts that live all around us are suddenly able to speak and tell us about their world. Each minibeast, from cockroach to caterpillar, has a distinct personality and voice and is eager to explain all. All of the behaviour is real and the Smalltalk Diaries allows viewers an intimate insight into creatures and behaviour never filmed before.

Changelings

Changing your appearance doesn’t change who you are, but it might help you make friends. Some very ugly insects talk us through the tricky business of shedding their skins to become something utterly different and spectacular, proving that beauty is often no more than skin deep. The blue bottle fly astounds us with his rapid transformation from yucky maggot to full-blown blow fly while the dragonfly larva changes from creepy underwater predator to “king of the skies”.

Weapons

Bombs, chemical weapons, fangs, traps, stings and tusks all make up this murderous minibeast arsenal. With so many gruesome and painful ways of wounding and destroying each other, you’d think these creatures might also have developed the brainpower to make best use of their dangerous abilities. The diminutive woodlouse makes an incredible claim – that it too has a powerful weapon – much to the disbelief of heavily armed predators such as the preying mantis. The woodlouse waits until the end to reveal its surprising secret, after we have witnessed the shocking range of weapons used by some of the world’s best armed minibeasts.

Predators

There’s an eat or be eaten world underfoot but, as our expert invertebrate hunter explains, predation is an important part of life (unless you’re the prey that winds up dead, that is). It helps if the prey animals are co-operative and have a sense of humour – but it also helps if you have some handy weapons and a plan.

All Wildscreenings are free; Subject to availability tickets can be collected from Box Office on the day of the screening. You can call Box Office on (0117) 927 5100, and reserve tickets but you must collect them on the day an hour before the start time of the screening.

NB: the advertised times are the actual starting times of each programme for all Wildscreenings.