In 2018 my friend, biologist Arnaud Martin, asked me to score two short films from the Smithsonian archives. Rearing Anartia, a 1976 8mm documentary film, as well as Colias, a 1971 16mm documentary film. Both films were created by entomologists Robert Silberglied and his collaborators: Rearing Anartia was produced with Annette Aiello at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Barro Colorado Island research station in Panama, while Colias was filmed in Arizona with Chip Taylor.
The films had been stored in the Smithsonian archives for decades, and Arnaud discovered and digitized them with proper permissions. I fell in love with the story of these scientists and their work, and asked percussionist Lisa Schonberg - who has an entomology background - to contribute to the scores.
Rearing Anartia was cleverly envisioned and edited by Annette Aiello, but Colias was still nearly a half hour of unedited footage. Lisa and I convened at a remote cabin in Oregon through the Shotpouch Artist Residency program at Oregon State University, where we used Taylor and Silberglied's 1979 published research paper (Ultraviolet Reflection and Its Behavioral Role in the Courtship of the Sulfur Butterflies Colias eurytheme and C. philodice (Lepidoptera, Pieridae)) as a guide to loosely edit the footage down to about thirteen minutes, leaving room for annotation.
We scored the film in about eight days. Arnaud and I later finalized the editing and annotation, and Lisa and I mixed the score with Anthony Brisson.
Colias premiered at the Imagine Science Film Festival in NYC October 20, 2019, and was also part of the Oregon State University DarkSide Cinema Program, where we presented our broader work on collaborations between artists and scientists.
In a serendipitous turn, Lisa and I found ourselves on Barro Colorado Island in 2019—where Arnaud had done some of his graduate work—via an art and science conference. The communications director at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute learned our story of the films, and we got to meet Annette Aiello in the flesh. Aiello has been working in Panama for nearly 50 years now, and her work at STRI has significantly contributed to understanding tropical insects and the biodiversity of Panama and Central America. Her short film is a testament to the creativity of scientists.
You can watch both films in their entirety here: Rearing Anartia and Colias: The Sulphur Butterflies.