MARION GRUBER: PREPAREDNESS IS PREVENTION, 30min. USA
Directed by Donald Rayne Mitchell
Dr. Marion Gruber is a world-renowned expert in vaccine development, regulation, and licensure. She worked at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for many years, serving as the director of the Office of Vaccines Research & Review (OVRR) from 2012-2021. In this short film, Dr. Gruber and several of her colleagues describe their efforts to ensure that life-saving vaccines were available during some of the most recent and well-known public health emergencies and why preparing for the next infectious disease threat is critical.

https://hillemanfilm.com/marion-gruber

Get to know the filmmaker:

1. What motivated you to make this film?

In collaboration with the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, I helped to create the educational initiative we call the Vaccine Makers Project (VMP). The VMP is made up of K-12 curricula which are supported by a variety of films and animations, the feature documentary, HILLEMAN among them. From the beginning, one of our goals with the project has been to put a human face to the science of vaccines. There’s a lot of noise out there around vaccine science but at the heart of the conversation are people that, in many cases, have dedicated their lives to protecting their fellow human beings through the prevention of disease. Marion Gruber is one of those people and her inspiring career is what motivated us to make this film.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?

In the summer of 2022 we were exploring the idea of making a film about Operation Warp Speed, the government program that made the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccines possible. But it didn’t take long to realize that we just didn’t have the budget or the people power to do justice to that subject. During the course of that research, however, we were fortunate enough to interview Dr. Gruber and the more we learned about her involvement in not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but the 2009 flu pandemic and the Ebola outbreaks in the mid-teens, the more we felt that her story was one the world should know about. My first interview with Dr. Gruber happened in mid-September, 2022 and we finished the film by mid-April, 2023.

3. How would you describe your film in two words!?
“Tempered urgency.” Think about what’s at stake when an infectious disease strikes. Lives are being lost with every passing minute. To stop those lives being lost we must act with urgency, but not with haste, because if we’re not careful our actions could cause more harm. Dr. Gruber and her colleagues understood both the urgency of shielding the public from the COVID-19 pandemic and simultaneously protecting the public from unproven products. They met that massive responsibility by tempering their desire to act fast with their need to rigorously evaluate the science. And they did that admirably!

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?
Imagine what happens on a daily basis at the FDA; maybe a meeting with your staff in the morning, a catch-up over lunch with a colleague, lots of phone calls and Zoom calls and then probably another meeting or two in the afternoon. Ebola is wreaking havoc in West Africa and you’re saving the world by having one meeting after the next. That’s not a very visually exciting story to tell. (And by the way, the FDA doesn’t video record all their meetings anyway so good luck finding archival footage of your subjects doing their jobs.) So as a filmmaker telling this story, the biggest obstacle was finding the visual language to convey the drama and the stakes that were at play in the work of Dr. Gruber and her team. We found that visual language primarily through news footage. And even though our protagonist wasn’t the subject of that news footage, our antagonists were, and that’s what drove our story forward.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?
Honestly, the audience reactions to the film were exactly what I would hope for; that realization that scientists working in public health are people just like us, and that they have families and they’re in this boat with us. If there’s one thing we need right now it’s more faith in each other. I think a film like this reminds you that institutions are made up of people, and that most people strive to be the best they can be and want to help where and when they can.

6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films?
Like every filmmaker that grew up in the 1970s, I knew I wanted to make films when I saw Star Wars for the first time.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?
In high school I worked as an usher, then a projectionist at the local movie theater. The cinema had two screens so I spent a lot of time managing the various movies that were running. But in between shows I would stand in the back of the theaters and watch the films. Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the movies we hosted during that time and so I’ve probably seen that movie more than any other during my lifetime.

8. What other elements of the festival experience can we and other festivals implement to satisfy you and help you further your filmmaking career?
The New York SCIENCE & NATURE FEEDBACK Film Festival is doing it right by bringing the festival experience into the virtual theater. It’s great to be able to experience a film with others in the same room but so often in today’s world creating that experience is really hard or even impossible. And that’s when this kind of experience is invaluable, not only to support filmmakers but to also create community around important subjects. Anything you can do to bridge that gap between the theater and our living rooms is so appreciated.

9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences been working on the festival platform site?
Nothing but good things to say about both FilmFreeway and the New York Science & Nature Feedback Film Festival!

10. What is your favorite meal?
Chicken Korma w/ rice, Chana Masala and Naan :-)

11. What is next for you? A new film?
I’m just finishing a short illustrated animation about the History of Vaccine Science in Pennsylvania and continuing to develop a feature film project based on Bill Foege’s book, House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox.