The video Diving into the heart of the molecules of life, prepared by researchers at the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Strasbourg, France, and available from YouTube in both English and French language versions, provides a detailed and informative introduction to the practice of protein crystallography. Colleagues are invited to prepare versions of this video in other languages.

A few years ago we started a film project motivated by our first participation in the French Science Fair (www.fetedelascience.fr). We realized that explaining why crystals are useful in biology to the general public would be more efficient with a movie than with nice posters and hundreds of words! This movie, called Diving into the heart of the molecules of life, was meant for educational purposes and illustrates how and why structural biologists obtain 3D crystal structures of biomolecules. So far we have kept it private because we did not consider it a finished product. However, the film has been seen by hundreds of biochemistry students every year in our university and about 300 DVDs have been distributed in biocrystallization workshops and meetings. An early version was also presented during the microsymposium "Teaching crystallography" at the IUCr meeting in Osaka.

On the occasion of the International Year of Crystallography, we recently prepared a revised and shorter version of the movie and we would be pleased to share it with the whole community. The film is accessible from the IYCr2014 playlist.

We currently have an English and a French version but if colleagues wish to prepare one in their own language, we are ready to provide them with original files (video + music + editable text + script in English). The film is available under the Creative Commons license and may be freely used by anyone.