One beautiful and unexpected intersection between art and science is crossed in Between The Folds from Green Fuse Films. Directed by Vanessa Gould, this is the first documentary to explore the realm of origami, a onetime folk craft has blossomed into a global art form.
Premiering last year, Between The Folds won audience awards at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and New Hampshire Film Festival. The documentary is currently finishing a run in Santa Fe, and its calendar for this year includes stops in Cleveland, San Diego, and elsewhere before screening this April at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison.
Here is the film’s official synopsis:
The film opens intimately with three of the world's best paper artists -- a former sculptor in France folding caricatures in paper that rival the figures of Daumier and Picasso; a hyper-realist who walked away from a successful physics career to instead challenge the physics of a folded square; and an artisanal papermaker who folds impressionistic creations out of the very same medium he makes from scratch.
As the film progresses, however, the artists become less conventional, and the post-modern concepts of abstraction, minimalism, deconstruction, process, and empiricism take root -- mirroring 20th century art itself. Abstract artists emerge with a greater emphasis on process and concept, rattling the fundamental roots of realism that have long dominated traditional paperfolding. Eventually science emerges as another front in the exploration of folded paper -- featuring advanced mathematicians and a remarkable researcher from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT and recent winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Award for his theoretical origami research.
While debates arise on issues of technique, symbolism and purpose, the film ultimately culminates with the idea that art and science are but two different interpretations of the very same world around us. And the medium of paperfolding -- a blank, uncut square -- emerges as a resounding metaphor for the creative potential and transformation of us all.
The stories of artists and scientists are unfolded over the course of the documentary. These minds include the “world’s leading origami theorist” Erik Demaine, and former NASA physicist Robert J. Lang, as well as educator Miri Golan and theorist Tom Hull. Then there are of course the multiple origami artists, including Giang Dinh, Vincent Floderer, Michael LaFosse, Eric Gjerde, Tom Hull, Paul Jackson, Eric Joisel, and Chris Palmer. Also highlighted is the late Arika Yoshizawa, a grandmaster of origami and innovator in its development as a modern art form.
Set to an original score composed by Gil Talmi and performed by members of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the film is just the kind of offbeat yet familiar kind of programming that succeeds in attracting an audience at the Wisconsin Film Fest.
The official trailer for Between the Folds follows.
A longer look at the documentary is provided in an early trailer released in 2006 while the film was still in production.
More information about Between The Folds can be found at IMDB and Facebook. Gould also discussed her film in an interview with Connect Savannah in advance of its screening last October at the Savannah Film Festival.
The eleventh Wisconsin Film Festival runs from Thursday, April 2 through Sunday, April 5. Tickets go on sale on Saturday, March 7.
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