Shifting Baselines

It's been a long road since our premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April of last year, but the movie is FINALLY being released today nationally on home video by New Video ($26.95) as part of their acclaimed Docurama showcase and is currently featured on their home page. It also will continue to air on Showtime over the next two years. If you haven't heard of "Flock of Dodos", you can read about the film and its reviews on our website. The DVD costs a bit less on Amazon.

Over the past year and a half I've attended about 50 public screenings, almost all of which have been followed by panel discussions or Q&A's. In these sessions, there are a number of most common questions that come up. These include, "What exactly is the difference between intelligent design and creationism?" "Why is this controversy so uniquely American?" and "Has the media done a good job of reporting this issue?"

We would have liked to have addressed these questions in the film, but we knew that if we did, we would have had an even more information-heavy film which would never have aired on the same channel that brings you "The L Word," and "Weeds." (by the way, the reason the film had such limited theatrical exposure was the distributors ALL felt it was too academic/educational/information-heavy, which is a nice contrast to some evolutionists who felt the film was "too light weight" and illustrates the central dilemma in communicating science).

So the great thing with home DVD is that it includes in the EXTRAS a section called, "Ten Questions," in which the answers to ten of the most common questions the film generates are answered by Dr. Eugenie Scott (Director of the National Center for Science Education) and a panel discussion sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute which includes three evolutionists and a theologian. It should be a very useful resource for educators.