Story submitted by Quincy Russell & Yves Paccalet, the writer of Captain Cousteau.

Mini-Monsters of the Amazon

Directed by Quincy Russell. Produced by Mona Lisa Productions (France) for ARTE (France & Germany), CBC The Nature of Things (Canada) and Discovery Science (USA). Written by Yves Paccalet (the writer of Commandant Cousteau) and Quincy Russell.

How often in a lifetime can a film producer declare that he is discovering a whole new world? From the award winning team of Cannibal Mites (Wildscreen 2000 Panda Award for Innovation), Mona Lisa Productions is currently in the post-production stages of its new high definition documentary Mini Monsters of the Amazon (2 x 1 hour, 1 x 52).To reveal this secret world Thierry Berrod will be using the patented environmental scanning electron microscope coupled with the new micro scanner.

Quincy Russell, film director, confronted the dangers of the Amazon rainforest in November 2008 with a team of international scientists to discover the amazing world of treehoppers. A strikingly visual insect that is hard to come by - of 3,400 species, 3,300 can only be found in the Amazon. A new world has been revealed for the very first time.

Russell said: "When I saw the first photographic stills of membracidae, I knew this would be a challenging but gratifying film to direct. They only measure a few millimetres and we hardly know anything about them. Evolution has produced these living beings that resemble contemporary art, yet have lived here for over 40 million years. Visually breathtaking, and researchers are revealing that they even have their own language. Their story is definitely one to tell!".

"Treehoppers will at long last have their own film, I've been waiting for this moment for a long while. We are looking for the unexpected, so by it's very nature we dont know what were going to find".

Dr Stuart McKamey: entomologist, American Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA.

"We know more about the moon than we do about treehoppers, they are so mysterious".

Prof Carolina Godoy : Author & Entomologist, University Estatal a Distancia, Costa Rica.