Evolution and Intelligent Design

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Images

Website

Topics

Human Development: Education, Youth
Human Rights: Religion
Information & Media: Communication, Culture, Freedom of Expression, Knowledge, Media, Science
Politics: Activism

Identity Niches

Student

Budget

Raised to date: $30,000.00
Estimate to complete: $250,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $280,000.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 11/01/2008

Status

Production

Media Type

Other

Project End Use

Other: All categories apply: Audio: clips from doc., extensive radio coverage. Print: reviews and interviews. Video/TV the doc. itself is broadcast, and becomes the subject of other b'cast through reviews, talks shows, etc. Web: all projects have extensive web presence. CQN's documentaries are screened at festivals, in theaters, broadcast nationally & internationally, then widely distributed to educational groups

Key Personnel

Rose Rosenblatt, Marion Lipschutz
Producer/Directors

www.incite-pictures.com

Incite Pictures & Cine Qua Non Formed in 1991 as a partnership of Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, Incite Pictures, and Cine Qua Non, a 501(c)(3), produces high-profile television documentaries and educational materials on subjects of social and cultural significance. They specialize in responding to targeted social and cultural issues with engrossing, emotional stories that "put a human face" on abstract concerns. Their last film, The Education of Shelby Knox, won Best Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, the Women in Leadership Award at Full Frame, Jury Awards at: Miami Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Sonoma Film Festival, as well as a dozen other top prizes. It launched the PBS Point of View season, a series that also featured Live Free or Die as a fall election special, a documentary that told the story of a doctor banned from teaching in his children’s schools because he provides abortions. Their work is often featured in Human Rights Watch Film Festival and three of their projects have been in the Council on Foundations Film Festival in which "shelby" won the Henry Hampton Award. Marion and Rose won the Freedom of Expression Award and were nominated for the British Index on Censorship Award. Other nationally airing work includes Fatherhood USA, a series on contemporary fatherhood; The Abortion Pill; and for a change of pace, The Trenchcoat Gang, a Court TV special about the most successful bank robbers in U.S. history.

Gary Griffin
Director of Photography
Gary has been working with Marion and Rose since their very first project, about a community in North Carolina organizing against a toxic waste treatment plant. Since then, he’s worked on films that have won every major award, including Best Cinematography for The Education of Shelby Knox at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Academy Award winning program, Educating Peter. He has worked for every network, on everything from The Daily Show to Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends, and shot the recent documentary about the Dixie Chicks, Shut Up and Sing, nominated for an Academy Award. He teaches at American University and at The Center for Independent Television Broadcast Journalism in Budapest and Prague. He graduated from American University with a BS in Film, Video and Photography.

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

CQN's projects are accompanied by a vigorous education and outreach plans that include dedicated websites, the development of specialized web, print and video materials, and coordinated work with constituent groups that insures projects have maximum impact for years after their initial broadcast.

Please contact for outreach plan.

Funders

Name	Amount	Date
Individual Donors	$5,000.00	11/01/2007
The Ford Foundation	$25,000.00	06/01/2006

Short Synopsis

A documentary on the controversy over teaching evolution versus intelligent design that follows the establishment of an IDEA (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) Club on a college campus.

Description/Treatment

Cine Qua Non will follow a small group of students participating in an IDEA Club at Cornell University. IDEA clubs are campus sponsored chapters of The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center, a national group set up to promote, "as a scientific theory, that life was designed by an intelligence" and to "challenge the philosophical assumptions of Darwinism." The purpose of idea clubs is to inform students about intelligent design with a range of activities, including "inviting Darwinists to their clubs to talk about Natural Selection." IDEA also sponsors a 5 to 15 week week course on intelligent design, with an easily replicated syllabus. The annual IDEA conference is a magnet for students, activists, professors and scientists who support intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinism.

At Cornell, the IDEA Club's activities intersect with a seminar called “Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?” a course on the cultural implications of evolutionary biology, that is well attended by students on both sides of the debate. While the members of the Cornell IDEA Club are determined to advance the teaching of intelligent design at the university, the school’s president has called intelligent design a “religious belief masquerading as a secular idea.” By focusing on the personal stories of students on both sides of this debate, the documentary will show the intersection of private and intellectual belief, and how one shapes the other. Particular attention will be paid, and respect given to, students who, by espousing ID, find themselves a beleaguered minority in scientific and campus communities.

Cine Qua Non is particularly interested in the divide that has grown between opposing sides of the evolution-ID debate, focusing on dialog to present the issue. “People think that an IDEA Club at Cornell is a great travesty, the end of the world and the death of science,” Cornell’s IDEA president told us. The professor of the Cornell course is more open: “I'm not going to be bashing (intelligent design), but I'm also not going to be advocating it. I'm going to be using it – and evolutionary biology too – to think about these very complicated ideas."

This spring, Ben Stein released a movie in defense of intelligent design to mixed reviews and some controversy. While the issue is naturally controversial, it’s also an opportunity to inform, and to leave audiences juggling the ethical questions involved. Rather than challenge one side to defend itself, our project will allow for a passionate, smart debate between the two sides.