cellular – Medicine on Screen

Challenge: Science Against Cancer or How to Make a Movie in the Mid-Twentieth Century

By David Cantor, PhD Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social (IDES), Buenos Aires

In 1949 the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare (DNHW) commissioned a cancer educational film, eventually called Challenge: Science Against Cancer. It was to be one of the first of a new form of film. The urgent task was to induce young scientists to think of cancer research and biomedicine as careers, and Challenge was to be a key part of the response.

READ ESSAY | VIEW FILM

COMING NEXT

The next essay for Medicine on Screen focuses on six films on “population issues” and family planning projects in Latin America, specifically Colombia. Produced by Airlie Productions during the 1970s, many of these films were supported by Profamilia—arguably the most successful associate to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in the world and the most important Colombian family planning organization. Together, the films illustrate some of the difficulties the population movement faced in the 1970s in promoting birth control in the Global South, some of the strategies implemented to tackle those difficulties, and the unexpected alliances that were formed along the way.

NEW IN NLM DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

Journey into Self (1968)

This is a filming of the first session of an intensive basic encounter group led by Dr. Carl Rogers, widely known for developing a client-centered approach to psychotherapy and as a founder of humanistic psychology, and Dr. Richard Farson, a founder of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. The session features eight previously-unacquainted persons from different regions of the United States, participating in a loosely structured, conversational “encounter,” a form of group therapy.