J.C. Mol gained the Filmliga’s recognition with his scientific films. His accelerated, decelerated and microscopic shots tended to abstraction and emphasized movement. Because of this they fitted into the Filmliga’s ideas on ‘absolute film’. It is not known exactly which sequences of crystals and flowers the Filmliga screened. J.C. Mol probably used his rough material in varying combinations for different purposes. The Netherlands Filmmuseum made this compilation as a reconstruction of the Filmliga’s screenings at the time.

“That Mol’s work is classified as reproduction, does not find justification in the usual division between art and nature; but in this case one does not seek to transform nature into a means for man, and the intention of the filmmaker does not go beyond the human eye’s perception of the natural elements. In this sense there is another important difference between a medical documentary and a Mol film. In the first case, natural reality is scarsely altered by the movie camera. In the second, one has the unconscious, yet decisive sensation that the depicted microscopic world has really become something

gigantic, of unimaginable dimensions. By now we are just one step from the borderline, considering that crystals and microbes become the actors in one of May Ray’s films. So, the intention would prevail over nature and the documentary would become a free composition. Nevertheless, the filmmaker that objectively documents the life of the microscopic world, but magnifies it to an unnatural dimension, is it not already opposed to nature?”. (Menno ter Braak, Filmliga, n. 11, May 1928)