| Featuring interviews with John Horton Conway (Coxeter's
intellectual heir), as well as Benoit Mandelbrot (the father
of fractals), Erik Demaine and Jeffrey Weeks (both MacArthur
Fellows), Coxeter's last PhD student Asia Ivic´ Weiss,
his daughter Susan Thomas, and many esteemed Coxeter devotees
(professional and amateur mathematicians alike), THE MAN
WHO SAVED GEOMETRY chronicles one man's undying passion
for geometry, as well as geometry's omnipresence in all our
lives - whether in the realms of computer graphics, nanotechnology,
immunology, cosmology, or pure (and sometimes purely frivolous)
intellectual pursuit.
Filmmaker David New was drawn to making a documentary
about Coxeter since he shared the Coxeterian appreciation
for the intersection of art and science - his university career
included studies in film, music, theatre, dance, metallurgy
and digital electronics. Prior to setting out on the documentary,
New had never heard of Coxeter, but he was an admirer of the
work of a number of Coxeter's collaborators, including artist
M.C. Escher and his scientifically inspired prints (New actually
read the book Gödel, Escher, Bach - twice), and
polymath Buckminster Fuller and his geodesic dome in Montreal
(when New was living there as a teenager, the dome's acrylic
cover had gone up in flames not long before; he occasionally
hopped the safety barrier, climbed the frame, and sat looking
out over the Montreal vista feeling simultaneously rebellious
and spiritual).
New's previous directing work includes Too Good To Be
True, the award-winning documentary about the AVRO Arrow,
The Sexual Revolution, which won a Gold Plaque at the
Chicago Film Festival, and fourteen episodes of The Secret
World of Gardens, a series about the alien world that
lives hidden in your backyard. His writing credits include
When the Fire Burns, a feature-length biography of
composer Manuel de Falla, which won numerous awards, including
the Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival and a Gold Apple
at the National Educational Film Festival, and The War
Symphonies, a portrait of Dmitri Shostakovich during the
Stalin years, winner of two Gemini awards and an International
Emmy.
Writer Siobhan Roberts met Donald Coxeter in 2001,
and followed him with a camcorder on his Budapest journey.
She was taken with his tremendous and enduring passion for
geometry, as well as his stomach-curdling bedtime elixir -
Kahlúa coffee liqueur, peach schnapps, sometimes a
splash of vodka, all mixed with soymilk - and his lifelong
habit of standing on his head every morning, to which he attributed
his longevity. Although by 2002 he had finally abandoned his
fitness routine, he was sufficiently reinvigorated by the
Budapest conference that during the trip he reinstated his
regime of pushups, as well as an air bicycle abdominal exercise
that had him spinning his legs through space.
Roberts is a freelance journalist who specializes in mathematics
and science. She contributes to Canadian Geographic,
Smithsonian, Maisonneuve, The Walrus,
The Globe and Mail, and The New York Times.
Her biography of Coxeter, King of Infinite Space, won
the 2009 Euler Prize, awarded by the Mathematical Association
of America, and her Toronto Life profile of the geometer
won a National Magazine Award. She is currently a Director's
Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
where she is working on a biography of the Princeton University
mathematician/magician John Horton Conway (Walker/Bloomsbury).
Producer Daniel Iron established Foundry Films in
2004, and shortly thereafter took on THE MAN WHO SAVED
GEOMETRY. He has produced Northern Town, a CBC
series set and shot in the Yukon, It's Me Gerald, a
six half-hour series for Showcase, and in 2005 Last Exit,
a TV movie with CTV directed by John Fawcett. In 2006 he produced
Manufactured Landscapes the theatrical documentary
on acclaimed photographer, Edward Burtynsky, directed by Jennifer
Baichwal which won best Canadian film at Toronto International
Film Festival, the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards
for Best Canadian Film and Best Documentary of 2006 as well
a Genie for Best Documentary. The team has also now completed
a third documentary, entitled Act of God, which is
in current theatrical release. Iron also produced Sarah Polley's
debut feature Away From Her starring Julie Christie
and Olympia Dukakis, which was released in the US by Lionsgate
in May 2007, and garnered six Gemini awards and two Academy
Award Nominations. His most recent production is Cairo
Time, written and directed by Ruba Nadda, starring Patricia
Clarkson and Alexander Siddig. He recently completed the documentary
Toscanini in His Own Words, directed by Larry Weinstein,
and has just wrapped production on The Bang Bang Club,
starring Ryan Phillippe, Taylor Kitsch and Malin Akerman,
a South-African co-production written and directed by Steven
Silver, and Act of Dishonour, shot on location in Tajikistan.
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