Within our world there is another: an alternate reality, in a different scale. Although many consider them simply toys, miniatures play a profound role in our lives, impacting individuals, communities, and entire civilizations. This film is a fascinating journey into these lush, intricate, and mesmerizing tiny worlds. It investigates the mysterious and profound human urge to create and keep miniatures, objects where we store memories, embody dreams, and learn to grasp a complex world. Our story begins in Willard Wiggan's workshop as he peers into a gigantic microscope. "You don't have to explain my work. It drives people into a frenzy of disbelief," he declares. His art is almost invisible to the naked eye, including a crown he made for the Queen of England that fit on the head of a pin. Flash backwards forty thousand years to pre-historic Europe, when a cave dweller chips a mammoth tusk into a human form. This painstakingly carved figure will become the world's oldest work of art. Then flash forward to present-day Hamburg, Germany, where hundreds of artisans create a fully functioning miniature of their international airport, drawing millions of visitors from around the world to their Miniature Wunderland. Across cultures and time, from the world's great museums to workshops of obsessed artisans and priceless collections of the rich and powerful, Miniature captures the tiny wonders of the world in high definition, on a scale never seen before.
