Short, anthropomorphically-inclined documentary showing the life-cycle of the common newt.

This typically delightful film from Britain's great pioneering wildlife filmmaker F. Percy Smith uses model animation to capture one of nature's engineering marvels: the spider's web-building. Presumably judging that live-action photography wasn't up to the job, Smith built his own charming eight-legged model, which he animates to illustrate how the spider "throws a thread of silk to the wind". Arachnophobes beware: in the final few seconds the cute model is replaced by the real deal, seen shooting its web like an arrow. This was Smith's first attempt at animation, but it would become an increasing element of his films, sometimes to more deliberately comic effect, as in his series charting the adventures of Archie the Ant.

Propped upon the tail-end of a match, a housefly performs astonishing feats, alternately juggling a series of objects - a blade of grass, a cork, a miniature dumbbell... Most extraordinary of all is the sequence in which the fly spins a ball twice its own size, while a second fly perches on top. In the final sequence, the fly repeats some of its earlier tricks while apparently seated on a tiny chair. This truly delightful (or singularly repellent) film is the work of Percy Smith, pioneer of a particularly engaging early form of natural filmmaking. 'The Acrobatic Fly' is one of a series of Smith films on similar subjects around this time, and near identical to, though briefer than, a sequence in his 1911 release 'The Strength and Agility of Insects', which also features similarly impressive accomplishments by a scorpion, a flea, a grasshopper and a praying mantis. Viewers might worry about the techniques used to secure such performances, but Smith always insisted that his stars were none the worse for their moment in the spotlight. (Mark Duguid)

"Percy Smith (1880-1944) was world famous as a photographer of plant life. Probably the first British example of time-lapse photography as applied to the growth of plants." Montly Film Bulletin, November 1955