Zoological Surrealism draws from French scientific and nature filmmaker Jean Painleve’s early oeuvre to rethink the entangled histories of cinema, Surrealism, and scientific research in interwar France. Delving deeply into Painleve’s archive, James Leo Cahill develops an account of cinema’s Copernican vocation - how it was used to forge new scientific discoveries while also displacing and critiquing anthropocentric viewpoints.