For a special Wildscreen Cinékids, we present three short films from SmallTalk Diaries, a series of short programmes about the world as seen by minibeasts. By using a secret invention called the Translation Lens, the myriad of creatures that live all around us are suddenly able to tell us about their world. From cockroach to caterpillar, each has a distinct voice and is eager to explain all about its life, from whizzpopping to metamorphosis! Following the screening, there’ll be an opportunity to meet some of the production team and discover how they created the SmallTalk world.

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.