In Erin Espelie’s Ideas of Order, myriad reflections on nature—ecosystems, biology, health, the creative impulse—are braided into a poetic interplay of words and images accompanied by bravura narration from experimental filmmaker Stephanie Barber. Part molecular travelogue, part guided meditation, the film teems with the close-up contours and movements of hidden worlds of wonder and menace. Ideas of Order is full of the kind of keen observations that stem from a life of looking; refined yet expressionistic, it casts a spell borne from the uncanny union of micro-photography and macro-epistemology. Throughout, the viewer is rewarded by an ineffable distillation of concepts, patterns, and forms that both echoes and expands on a proposition from painter Agnes Martin (no stranger to the art of plexus), that the “perfection underlying life drives us to fantastic extremes.” TM

Q&A following screening