Wladyslaw Starewicz (1882–1965) only gets two small mentions in Georges Sadoul’s Histoire generale du cinema. Yet this artist, who has been adapted by the Russians, as well as the Poles and the Lithuanians, nicknamed the “European Disney”, is today considered one of the most ingenious figures in world cinema. Back in 1910 he shocked audiences with a film in which he managed to set various insects in motion and is thus regarded as the founder of puppet animation. He used all kinds of real insects and bugs; he first killed them, then threaded wires through them and brought them to life for the film screen. He was also one of the first to make a parody on the film industry itself, using the motif “film within a film”. For celebrated American animators the Quay brothers, Starewitch is a film alchemist; for other specialists who appear in this playful and deftly edited profile, he is a film pioneer who, at the dawn of animation, invented all his special effects himself. And for loved-up Bug, one of his most famous characters, wittily guiding viewers through the film, he is God.