New to VOD this week:
HILLEMAN: A PERILOUS QUEST TO SAVE THE WORLD’S CHILDREN
Director:
Donald Rayne Mitchell
Premiere:
Scinema 2016
Select Festivals:
American Documentary, New Hope
About:
A profile of Dr Maurice Hilleman, credited with developing most childhood vaccines.
Mitchell’s film follows the now-familiar conventions of the unheralded hero profile – “the most important X the public has never heard of” – and in this case positions Hilleman as “the greatest scientist of the 20th century” for his pioneering work in eliminating many childhood diseases via vaccines. Responsible for the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, as well as those addressing a host of other diseases, from hepatitis B to the flu, there’s reason to recognize the microbiologist’s achievements in the same way that Salk and Sabin are celebrated for their polio vaccines. Mitchell constructs a fairly conventional, overly narrated biographical portrait more suited to PBS than to theatrical, drawing from archival material as well as more recent interviews with Hilleman before he passed away.
what (not) to doc 