Not sure if it’s the imagery, the music, or just the rhythm of the whole piece, but this is ten minutes well spent. I love the faces of the glass-blowers as they puff out their cheeks, sometimes smoking a pipe at the same time. Lovely.

Glas won master film maker Bert Haanstra a well-deserved Academy Award® for Best Short Documentary in 1959. The film contrasts the production of hand made crystal from the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with automated bottle making machines in the Netherlands. An industrial film with a bebop heart, its lyrical use of light and sound still looks and sounds fabulous, nearly 60 years after it was made.