Between The Folds

“Between the Folds” tells the stories of 10 fine artists and intrepid scientists who abandoned careers and scoffed at hard-earned graduate degrees - all to forge the unconventional life of a modern-day paperfolder. As these offbeat characters converge on the unusual medium of origami, they reinvent an ancient artform, and demonstrate the innumerable ways creativity and ingenuity come to bear as we struggle to understand and honor the world around us – as individuals, artists, scientists, collaborators, preservers, and simply curious beings.
The film opens with several of the world’s best paperfolders – including a clownish, reclusive Frenchman folding caricatures that rival the figures of Daumier and Picasso; and a hyper-realist who walked away from a successful physics career, instead to challenge the physics of a folded square.
As the film progresses, the artists become less conventional, and the post-modern concepts of abstraction, minimalism, deconstruction, process, and empiricism take root – mirroring 20th century art itself. Eventually science emerges as another front in the exploration of origami – featuring a remarkable researcher from the Artificial Intelligence Lab 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 culminates with the idea that art and science are but two different interpretations of the very same world around us. And ultimately, the medium of paperfolding - a blank, uncut square - emerges as a resounding metaphor for the creative potential and transformation of us all.

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