Just because it’s summer, we’d like to share Independent Lens: Between the Folds for your learning pleasure.  (And shouldn’t what too many would see as an oxymoron — learning and pleasure — be our goal in teaching?)

In this video you’ll watch an origami artist turn a flat square of paper into a three dimensional creation that’s magical! From a minimalist single crease to mathematical calculations to realistic creature, origami fascinates.  Around the globe, several fine artists and theoretical scientists are abandoning more conventional career paths to forge lives as modern-day paper folders. Through origami, these offbeat and provocative minds are reshaping ideas of creativity and revealing the relationship between art and science.

BETWEEN THE FOLDS chronicles 10 of their stories. Featuring interviews with and insights into the practice of these intrepid paper folders, the film opens with three of the world’s foremost origami artists, moves to less conventional artists, and also features advanced mathematicians and a remarkable scientist who received a MacArthur Genius Award for his computational origami research.  The Independent Lens site also offers links to the history of origami, behind-the-scenes information about the film and filmmakers and background on the origami artists.