Customer Reviews

Independent Lens: Between the Folds

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the most wonderful kind of documentary showing an art form that has become integrated into mathematical and scientific applications. Models of discovery originating with origami have been used in space, in automobile airbags and beyond. Since proteins fold causing diseases like Alzheimer's can medicine cause the proteins to unfold and so cure the disease? The film maker showed the history of origami from an early Japanese practitioner who was the first to use wet folding. His figures look like they are about to breathe they seem so alive. She shows a convention of young people from around the world who are competing with one example of a dragon folded from one sheet of paper with complicated scales. Imagine all the bugs in the universe folded magically before you with all the right number of legs to be anatomically correct...every year the invention with origami gets more complex and more amazing. In the 70's maybe 60 to 80 folds would complete one form. Now maybe 120 to 150 steps are required. And in the future? Over a thousand. She showed the most intricate realistic shapes and then abstract origami. Wow! And its all over the world. She found practitioners in France and Israel all working in very different ways. This documentary would be perfect for use in classrooms to encourage observing, envisioning, innovating and inventing.

When this 55-minute documentary - which played on PBS - begins you are amazed at how intricate practitioners of Origami (Japanese art of paper folding) are. You see one single piece of paper (though it could be five feet in length) become a lizard or a violist or a beautiful multi-colored abstract sculpture. (They use special colored paper to create the latter). Origami requires that the artist use a single sheet, no cutting and no pasting. )> The word "Amazing" pops into your head. How o they do this? (Answer: hours and hors of folding and a mind that sees the result long before they start.) The high-definition quality of the original film and its DVD transfer will bring out these astoundingly beautiful images on practically any TV set.

But about half way through the film - when writer, producer and director Vanessa Gould has you mesmerized - we move from the artists to the "mathematicians" who use the paper folding to solve long time mathematical questions and teach students in elementary schools about math through origami. You'll meet the father and son geniuses (the younger becoming a professor at MIT at age 20!) that are using it to help scientists examinethe forms of human body cells and DNA. As the son says, "we may even, someday, find a cure for AIDS". Then there is the teacher who has integrated origami into the math curriculum in all the elementary schools in Israel and the results of test show that it improves the students' scores.

This film won many festival awards and deservedly so.

The DVD includes a collection of "deleted scenes" (my favorite is the genius son who says he does this only because it has to be fun) as well as a six-minute short film (also by Gould) about the Israeli school program.

Whether you appreciate art or science or just want to be fascinated for an hour, this is film that I can highly recommend!


Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

This documentary stays focused on origami however, it is much more a documentary on interdisciplinary art. What is more interesting is that what make origami art can be applied to just about any art or discipline.

The one big plus about this documentary is that it is not a collage of meaningless soundbites. We can almost use this as a training film or at least a professional class.

We start out with the kitsch factor of origami then go through the different forms of origami. Then we get to meet the man that really changed the concept of origami Akira Yoshizawa. From there we learn that there can be more than meets the eye with the mathematical application of origami and the origami application on geometry. We apply origami to potentially all forms of science. Then we even apply it to practical applications as folding of air bags for automobiles.

Now let us slow down and see that the individual artists and engineers presenting this program also are presenting the evolution of how people become experts in their field. We see that everything starts out (concise or otherwise) as a series of simple skills and progress into complexity. We try to imitate reality. Later we realize that am imitation is just that and drop the effort to imitate in place of capturing its essence. You see this in artists and writers that appear to have gone off the deep end. It also applies to practicality when we stop making robots to look like people and instead capture the functions needed.

If we do not take the time to contemplate the impact of origami on the world, the documentary is just fun to see what you can make or maybe purchase in the world.

I would really have liked to see an expanded documentary on papermaking.

Dr. Erik D. Demaine ... Computational origamist and theorist
Martin L. Demaine ... Computational origamist and theorist
Vincent Floderer ... French paper artist
Miri Golan ... Origami artist and teacher
Vanessa Gould ... Narrator
Dr. Tom Hull ... Origami artist and mathematician
Paul Jackson ... Origami artist
Eric Joisel ... Origami artist
Michael LaFosse ... Origami artist
Dr. Robert J. Lang ... Origami artist, scientist and theorist
Christopher K. Palmer ... Material artist
Richard L. Alexander ... Papermaker
Brian Chan ... Origami artist
Satoshi Kamiya ... Origami
Sam Nathans ... Origami artist
Bernard Peyton ... Bear biologist and origami artist
Jonathan Schneider ... Origami artist/Mathematician
Akira Yoshizawa ... Origami artist (archive footage)

This documentary is a real gem. Who would have ever guessed that origami could successfully capture my attention for a full hour? Not only that, it was fun to watch and left me wanting to learn even more! Vanessa Gould masterfully reveals the dynamic and surprising aspects of origami. This is not an art for art's sake type of film. The director shows how origami has very practical applications in education, medicine and physics yet still retains a very playful nature.

Much more than I could have ever imagined, Between the Folds chronicles the stories of ten fine artists and theoretical scientists who have abandoned careers and scoffed at hard-earned graduate degrees--all to forge unconventional lives as modern-day paperfolders." The simplicity of origami is that it allows everyone the opportunity to create their own interpretation of the world we all share -- through paper. An art form that is not only revolutionizing contemporary art as newer generations of practitioners redefine and exceed traditional perimeters. Mathematicians like Erik Demaine, associate professor of MIT, are also using computer based models of origami to study how to save lives...

By trade, I am a mixed media papermaker. Director Vanessa Gould says: "At its heart, Between the Folds is a film about potential. The potential of an uncut paper square. The potential of a wild scientific idea. The potential to see things differently..." ...And that's exactly how I came away from the viewing. ...Feeling like the only limits on my art are the ones I place there myself.

Between the Folds has won several awards and is being called "Filmmaking at its most wondrous. ... breathtaking." . . . "A riveting feast for the eye and mind" . . . "Mesmerizingly beautiful" . . . "Exhilarating" . . . I think it would be a great edition to any collection. Especially for teachers of art or math. I also found it interesting that besides being the director, Vanessa Gould is also a pianist and artist. The ability to cross disciplines gave her great sensitivity in filming the project. Beautiful imagery as well.

Here is a link to BTF official website: Between The Fold Website: [...]

This documentary is stunning. The things that are being made from a square piece of paper begger belief. And the documentary is so well done that the lady who did it should get a MacArthur grant. There is real genius here. I have ordered, and given away, about 15 copies of the DVD.

When most of us think of origami we think of what? Usually it's the "cutey catcher" from grade school or the "crane".

Between the Folds takes one to a new dimension in exploring origami and its use of paper in the 21st century. From its use in grade schools in Israel as a venue to teach geometry, to a successful physcist who retired early to pursue a career full time in origami, to the whimsical work of a french man named Joisel, this film leads one down the proverbial rabbit hole of Alice and explodes into a world that most of us never could imagine in our wildest dreams. It is well worth the price or if your on a budget or uncertain, catch it on your local PBS and then buy it.

This video is certainly an inspiration that extends past the limits of paper. The documentary shares the best minds and views associated with origami but certainly leaves a fascination to make choices to doing more, change the existing, and motivate the mediocre.

Seriously, this is one of the best shows I've seen. Avatar Shmavatar, ok? If the things these people make with paper don't blow your mind, then there's something's wrong, and I don't mean with the disc, if you get my meaning. For everyone else, watch it, oh, maybe 10 times or so, and it will just barely start to sink in how utterly cool it is. Then watch it again.

4.5 stars

Ah, but it's nice to see my tax dollars doing something useful for a change.

Gorgeous doc by Vanessa Gould that explores and celebrates Origami and its increasingly real-world applications. Non-stop beauty as the folders fold and discuss their motives and joys while so doing. Some astoundingly lovely works of art emerge; my favorite folks were the Eric/ks: Eric Demaine and Eric Joisel, one a prof at M.I.T. by age 20, the other a true sculpting genius, both united by their love of the origamic discipline and its seemingly endless inherent delights. But everyone on display here is in one way or another a treat to watch and consider. Origami obviously attracts some very bright minds, minds not afraid to fold in on themselves intensely and with much happiness.

I played some with this art form as a kid, but these guys take it to a whole 'nother plane. And planes. And zones. There's a lot to ponder for the math geek in all of us here, and even more for the lover of epiphanic symmetries and tesselations. Gould does a fine job of quickly peering into the minds of about a dozen truly gifted pairs of hands/cortices, and the viewer leaves feeling refreshed and inspired in many ways, and astounded by the level of artistry and genius revealed by some of these folks. At least, I did.

I wish everything on tv were half as entertaining and enlightening as this wonderful little film. Or even 1/16th.

Highly recommended.