By Vanessa Zimmer
Instant Life is a saga of showmanship, stubbornness, and the love of Sea Monkeys.
Showing in a three-hour block in the Indie Episodic section of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, the docuseries follows the life of Harold von Braunhut, magician, entrepreneur, and mad scientist, and the woman who became his wife and business partner, Yolanda Signorelli.
Harold, we learn, walked into a pet shop one day and admired the tiny brine shrimp wriggling in the aquarium. The cute critters with big heads and long tails would make good pets, he observed. The store owner scoffed. They're fish food, he said. They only live a couple of days.
Harold, the maker of such novelty toys as Invisible Goldfish and X-Ray Specs, went home determined to find a way to make the creatures thrive. And by 1960 or 1961, he was selling Amazing Live Sea Monkeys from ads in the back of comic books. They were a hit.
Along the way, Harold met and married Yolanda, an actress in exploitation movies, and he taught her the secret formula and instructions for making the monkeys. Harold died in 2003, and she took over. She continued supplying the powders and food packets, and a manufacturer put them all together in kits.
But come 2012, the manufacturer stopped paying her and outsourced to China. Yolanda sued. Whether they like it or not, I am the mother of the Sea Monkeys, she says.
Four years since her last royalty check, the electricity at her Maryland home has been cut off for nonpayment. Still, she continues fulfilling the Sea Monkey guarantee. With wood ablaze in the fireplace and candles lit, she meticulously responds to letters and sends out replacement kits at her own expense. The counterfeits from China are inferior, she says.
She is hard and stoic in fighting for the Sea Monkey business, but soft and loving to the creatures in the woods surrounding her home, property that she has turned into a wildlife refuge. She mourns the death of her soulmate, the parrot named Josephine, who died in her arms - a loss she blames on the situation she's been thrust into. She feeds crackers to the birds, cookies to the raccoons. She contrived a bug collector that allows her to scoop up insects inside the house and release them outdoors.
We need to protect animals because they don't have a voice, and they can't collaborate like people do, she says adamantly. In her mind, that extends to a Sea Monkey: Even though it's considered a toy, it's a living being.
Yolanda agreed to let directors/producers/cinematographers Mark Becker and Aaron Schock tell her story. She let us into her world, and it's been an incredible experience, Becker said in the recorded Q&A following the screening.
Yolanda didn't shy away from the darker sides of the story, including a disturbing aspect of Harold's history. Sometimes you live with someone a long time and you don't know them she says in the film. There was a side he never revealed to me.
Becker and Schock intended to make a 90-minute documentary film, but in the editing process had to face the fact that the story was too complex to pare down that radically. They have the three episodes shown at the Festival, and more to come.
Said Becker: You are going to be hearing about our Sea Monkey family for some time to come.
North America Stories
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
29/05/2026
Experimental HIV vaccine achieves a long-sought goal In a first for the field, all non-human primates given a new series of vaccines generated antibodies capabl...
28/05/2026
FOX Sports' MLB coverage dominated the night at the 47th Annual Sports Emmy ...
28/05/2026
One of the most memorable postseasons in baseball history would have had no memo...
28/05/2026
NBC's Sunday Night Football is among the most-decorated and most-watched pro...
28/05/2026
The 2026 Sports Emmys marked a watershed moment for Prime Video Sports. After bu...
28/05/2026
Hosted by ESPN Senior Writer Ryan McGee, the ceremony honored winners from athletic departments, conference offices, professional networks, production companies...
28/05/2026
Major rights-holders rolled out their 2026 college football slates today, offering a first look at marquee windows, kickoff partners, and conference distributio...
28/05/2026
The 4 Nations Face-Off, an international competition that launched in February 2...
28/05/2026
Soccer is a truly global sport, and, to match the U.S. viewing audience's in...
28/05/2026
The NFL Today, CBS Sports' top-of-the-line NFL studio show, has a storied hi...
28/05/2026
Prime Video is no stranger to innovation, and, within the realm of live streamin...
28/05/2026
The crack of the bat, the pop of the glove, and the cheer of the crowd: those are three prime examples of the glorious sounds fans hear on televised baseball ga...
28/05/2026
Every year, March Madness captivates the entire sports world. Nonstop action, un...
28/05/2026
NBA on NBC was an integral part to live sports production in the 1990s, and, when the league made these media rights available, NBC Sports saw an opportunity to...
28/05/2026
UmpCam is a technological wrinkle that has given fans unprecedented views of wha...
28/05/2026
T-Mobile and the United States Golf Association (USGA) announced a multi-year partnership, making T-Mobile the Official 5G Network Partner of the U.S. Women'...
28/05/2026
By Gina McIntyre
(L-R) Sara Dosa and Andri Sn r Magnason attend the Time and Water premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at Library Center Theatre ...
By Vanessa Zimmer
