by Rooney Elmi Kenneth Paul Rosenberg MD’s Bedlam profiles of one of the most pervasive and stigmatized public health crises: mental illness. Taking its titular inspiration from the infamous English “madhouse” founded in the 13th Century (and inspiring Rosenberg’s book of the same name), Bedlam mixes archival footage of psychiatric hospitals, emergency rooms, protest demonstrations, …
New Efforts to Improve Rural Healthcare Crisis
By Suzanne Gordon The three caregivers we meet in The Providers face daunting challenges as they try to deliver medical and mental healthcare to patients in rural New Mexico. Sadly, their struggles are reproduced all over America because for decades the nation has failed to address the problem of delivering healthcare outside of urban and …
A Day in the Life of a Rural Doctor, When No Day is the Same
Leslie Hayes knew she wanted to become a doctor from a very young age. She was raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a community that hosts a national nuclear laboratory and that boasts the highest rate of PhDs per capita in the nation. She came to El Centro, the rural health care network in New …
Filmmaker Cullen Hoback Digs Into Political Cover-Ups and Chemical Spills in Americans Water
Filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s previous film Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), a humorous but chilling documentary about the erosion of online privacy and what info governments and corporations are legally taking from citizens each day, has become (or remains) timely again. Hoback’s new film, What Lies Upstream, promises to remain relevant for some time as …
Deep Inside Mexico, Filmmaker Finds Remnants of a Rich but Endangered Culture
Aaron Schock wanted to make a documentary about Mexico that wasn’t about immigration, for a change. While scouting for subjects in the rural communities off the beaten path, he happened upon a traveling circus, and the rest is, well, Circo. The intimate, pastoral, and lyrical film tells the story of a circus family desperately trying …