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INDEPENDENT LENS “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.” “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.” “Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.” When you look at a piece of paper, what do you see? If your answer is a flat, two-dimensional square, then Between the Folds will astound you. Blurring the mysterious lines between art, science, sculpture and math, the film is an exhilarating adventure into origami, or paper folding, featuring works of art whose emotional expressiveness and engineering complexity defy logic. Just as Michelangelo might have seen a statue standing frozen inside a block of marble, the eccentric artists and scientists in Between the Folds envision the three-dimensional possibilities of paper, and, as if by alchemy, change the mundane into the poetic and magical—all without scissors, tape or glue. Ultimately, the medium of paper folding itself—a blank, uncut square—emerges as a resounding metaphor for the creative potential in us all. Directed, written and produced by Vanessa Gould, Between the Folds will premiere on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009 at 11 p.m. on Eight/KAET. 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 paper folders. While they may have come to origami through different experiences and for a variety of reasons, common threads emerge; paper folding consumes them, they talk about it in musical terms and many of these provocative and highly intelligent people practice paper folding 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 hyperrealist who walked away from a successful physics career to challenge the physics of a folded square instead; and an artisanal papermaker who folds impressionistic creations from the very same medium he makes from scratch. However, as the film progresses, 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 paper folding. Eventually science emerges as another front in the exploration of folded paper—featuring advanced mathematicians and a remarkable scientist from the Artificial Intelligence While debates arise on issues of technique, symbolism and purpose, the film ultimately culminates with the notion that art and science are two different interpretations of the very same world around us. Participants (in alphabetical order)
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