International Documentary Film Project: "Out of the Chrysalis"
The Clayman Institute for Gender Research is pleased to announce their collaboration with scholar/filmmakers John Füegi and Jo Francis of Flare Films in the production of a documentary film entitled "Out of the Chrysalis: A Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian."
Merian, who lived from 1647 -1717, is important to science for her groundbreaking work in entomology, for her scientific expedition to Surinam from 1699 to 1701, and as an artist and scientific illustrator during the Dutch Golden Age.
Release of the film is planned for 2007, funding permitting. The west-coast US premiere will be sponsored by the Institute and held at Stanford University.
"Out of the Chrysalis" is part of Flare Productions' series of historical biographies of women. The films include:
- "Red Ruth: That Deadly Longing" (winner of the Danish Television Oscar in 1993)
- "The War Within: A Portrait of Virginia Woolf" (named one of the four best documentary features in 1996 by the International Documentary Association)
- "In the Symphony of the World: A Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen" (winner of the 1999 Silver Award of the Philadelphia International Film Festival and the International Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers)
- "Ada Byron Lovelace: To Dream Tomorrow" (winner in 2003 of the Best in Festival Documentary Award of the Berkeley International Video and Film Festival and the Grand Goldie Award for Excellence in Filmmaking).
This last film premiered at Stanford University in January, 2003.
"Out of the Chrysalis" is planned to engage the expertise of scholars from entomology, history of science, and art history at the height of the Dutch Golden Age. These presently include: Professor Londa Schiebinger, Director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, as an international authority on Merian's contributions to the history of science; Professor Sandrine Ulenberg of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, who is both an international authority on Merian's contributions to entomology and Curator of the world-class collection of Merian first editions held by the Bibliotheek der Nederlandse Entomologische Vereniging; James Owen, head of the photo lab of the Natural History Museum (London); Sharon Valiant, who is currently working on a Merian family publishing history; Ron Smit, Director of the publishing unit of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT) and an expert on Surinam; and Niels-Knud Liebgott, Director of the Royal Danish Collections at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen where fifty Merian paintings (forty-eight of them previously unpublished) are held. Filming will be undertaken by Danish cinematographer Morten Bruus, whose film "All Things Fair" received an Academy Award Nomination.
Further details about the series and other work of Füegi and Francis are available at: www.mith.umd.edu/flare