Between the Folds
A film by Vanessa Gould
Free screenings in 55 cities across the country. Find one near you at http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/between-the-folds/getinvolved.html. MAA members interested in attending as a group should contact their local listing.
Showing at the Mathematical Association of America’s Carriage House
1781 Church Street NW
Thursday, December 3 at 6:30 PM
Between the Folds chronicles ten people whose lives have been transformed by paper-folding. From artists to physicists to educators, many have abandoned careers and hard-earned graduate degrees — all to forge unconventional lives as modern-day paperfolders. While they may have come to origami through different experiences and for a variety of reasons, common threads emerge: paperfolding consumes them, they talk about it in musical terms, and many of these provocative and highly intelligent people practice paperfolding because, well, it’s fun!
The film opens with three of the world's foremost origami artists — a former sculptor in France folding caricatures rivaling 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 from 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 modern 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 scientist from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT and winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Award for his computational origami research.
While debates arise on issues of technique, symbolism and purpose, the film ultimately culminates with the notion that art and science are but two different interpretations of the very same world around us. To learn more about the film, visit the Between the Folds interactive companion website. Blurring the mysterious lines between art, science, sculpture and math, the film is an exhilarating adventure into origami, or paperfolding, featuring works of art whose emotional expressiveness and engineering complexity defy logic.
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Math in the News: "New Documentary Highlights Beauty and Diversity of Mathematical Origami"
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There will be two additional FREE Community Cinema events in Washington, DC:
Sunday, November 15 at 3 PM (speakers TBA) – Washington DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th Street, NW at Q
Sunday, November 22 at 5 PM (speakers TBA) – Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th Street, NW
For reservations to either of the above screenings email btf@communitycinema-dc.org or call 202-939-0794.
Directed, written and produced by Vanessa Gould, Between the Folds will officially premiere on Tuesday, December 22 at 10 p.m. (check local listings) on the PBS series Independent Lens.
The Mathematical Association of American is a national partner for the ITVS Community Cinema screenings of Between the Folds.
The events are presented in partnership with series partners, WHUT, Busboys and Poets, the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, the Social Action and Leadership School for Activists; and national partners, origamiUSA and the Mathematical Association of America.
Community Cinema is a free monthly screening series engaging communities through film produced by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with free advance screenings of upcoming PBS Independent Lens documentaries. For more information, visit www.pbs.org/independentlens/getinvolved or www.communitycinema-dc.org.
What others are saying about Between the Folds
“Between the Folds is a gorgeous cinematic experience. I was so captivated by the documentary that halfway through I felt intense admiration for humanity, the same tingling I feel when listening to music so exquisite it’s almost painful.”
— Karen A. Frankel, talkingscience.org
"This film ... reveals origami itself as richer and more intricate than you could imagine... and by the end, you find yourself convinced that the mystery of folding could be one of the universe's deep secrets."
— Chris Anderson, Curator, TED
Independent Lens is an Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning weekly series airing Tuesday nights at 10:00 PM on PBS. The acclaimed anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of their independent producers. Independent Lens features unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history. Presented by ITVS, the series is supported by interactive companion websites and national publicity and community engagement campaigns. Further information about the series is available at www.pbs.org/independentlens. Independent Lens is jointly curated by ITVS and PBS, and is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private corporation funded by the American people, with additional funding provided by PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts. The series producer is Lois Vossen.