A tiny retro television.
Miniature
Directed by: Tony Coleman and Margaret Meagher
Starring: Tony Coleman, Tim Dunn and Michael Paul Smith
Classification: PG; 65 minutes
Willard Wiggan's micro sculpture on the head of a pin.
From the good-things-come-in-small-packages file: Miniature, a delightful 65-minute documentary on the magic of minute objects and the squinting artisans around the world who create them. We see dollhouses, small villages, train sets and other things exquisitely detailed and impossibly operational.
While something like the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany, is incredibly complicated, the mid-century American town imagined by the late Michael Paul Smith is a quaint, wistful place to visit.
Miniature Director Tony Coleman peeps through a tiny dollhouse.
I’m not sure directors Tony Coleman and Margaret Meagher come up with a definitive answer as to why we find pleasure in making and possessing scaled down objects, but it probably has something to do with the control, escape and idealism involved with these little worlds of gentle order and make-believe. Informative and inquisitive, Miniature thinks big about the wonders of the tiny.
Miniature screens Feb. 3, 2 p.m., at Toronto’s Hot Doc Ted Rogers Cinema, with a director’s Q&A to follow. The film is also available on demand on Super Channel
Brad Wheeler