Folding Up Shop (Long)

Some time ago I started feeling the pull to make another documentary film. I was getting over my production hangover from the first one (“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”) and wanted to put my newfound skills to use. How great would it be to not have to encounter every situation for the first time? To not have to muddle through every decision? To actually build on all of this suffering I endured making the first film? To not make another film seemed irresponsible, wasteful almost -- analogous to plowing away through law school and then deciding not to take the bar exam.



The subject? Something even more esoteric and impossible to market than air hockey: folding. I was interested in technical “professional” origami, knot theory, pop-up books, real-world packaging applications – basically the intersection of art, math, and science in regards to folding.



Even stuff as mundane as tie tying, flag folding, and fitted sheet folding seemed interesting—maybe this was fertile territory, perhaps there was something culturally significant going on there as well. There were countless examples—here is a crocheted version the hyperbolic plane.



Middlebrow was one of the few people who supported this idea. I’d already given up on trying to find funding for this; it would be a passion project. Who would finance a documentary about folding? Everyone I pitched the idea to out here in Los Angeles looked at me funny. Perhaps my pitch was lousy. Maybe there was no clear protagonist and no clear goal so it was hard to see the point of it all. I was making a film about ideas, ha ha!



I continued to believe in this project, however. More than anything, the subject was interesting to me--something I could immerse myself in for over a year, which is the most important thing of all when doing a film, I believe. Even more important than marketability. That feeling of danger, that feeling of not knowing what you’re going to get. Feeling like you are going to discover many wonderful things along the way instead of going out on the road and trying to find sound bites to plug into your pre-written piece.

Well, today I discovered this:



Looks like somebody beat me to it!

I feel legitimized and very very sad at the same time. “See!” I said. “This movie won awards all over the place! I knew it was a great idea!” And then, “Shit!”

I’m sure this has happened to everyone. What do you do when you realize your beautiful little baby has already been done and done better by someone else already? I never thought I would see this happen with this particular documentary project, though. Out of all my ideas, this is the one I never thought anyone would ever be interested in.



Sure, one could argue that it’s probably a very different film than the one I would make, but the vibe of the trailer seems eerily similar. A friend of K’s has a movie called “Children of Invention” that is making festival rounds. It’s about two Asian kids who are abandoned by their mother for a short time and have to fend for themselves. Well, it just so happens there is another movie also making the rounds called “Treeless Mountain” which seems to be eating up more of the oxygen in the room. “Treeless Mountain” is also about two Asian kids who are abandoned by their mother for awhile and have to fend for themselves. Both of these films owe a huge debt to the Japanese film “Nobody Knows” (which is only 5 years old), but that is another story..

K said “Children of Invention” had trouble getting into some festivals because “Treeless Mountain” had already been accepted, and the films were too similar in tone and plot and character for the festival to program both.

So, there you go.

Here’s a link to the nice trailer of “Between the Folds”:

http://www.greenfusefilms.com/