An extraordinarily beautiful and simple science film about the history of biological ideas which shows how they expanded as technology improved. Filmed in museums and in the Cambridge University labs where Whitehead had been a student, The Perception of Life was filmed through microscopes used by scientists from the 17th to the 20th century, including the electron microscope in the MRC unit where Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA.

What began as a documentary about French sculptress Niki de St Phalle finished up as a fantasy about a woman's attempts to exorcise the influence of her sexually domineering father. Alternately gothic and surreal, de Saint Phalle and Mia Martin are the two protagonists in a kind of "Let’s Get Daddy" charade, acting out their fantasies on the poor unfortunate patriarch, as played by Rainer Diez.