From its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic “War on Cancer” in the last century comes a close personal look at the history of cancer.
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Sarah founded Redglass Pictures in 2006 as a platform for creating original film series and video installations. A graduate of The University of California at Berkeley, she came to filmmaking after watching the epic documentary Hoop Dreams. She went on to produce the HBO documentary Hard As Nails, which premiered at The Tribeca Film Festival. She was honored to have the chance to interview one of her heroes, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 2010.
Tom is a director, editor, cinematographer and founding partner of Redglass Pictures. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Syracuse University, he is a past winner of the Alexia Foundation For World Peace's photography fellowship. In addition to his work at Redglass Pictures, he has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 2007. He enjoys the films of Stanley Kubrick, the writing of David Foster Wallace and ABC's The Bachelor.
This “biography” of cancer – from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic “War on Cancer” in the last century – comes at a moment of inflection in the history of the disease, when scientific breakthroughs have put a cure within reach. The series matches the epic scale of the disease, reshaping the way the public sees cancer and stripping away some of the fear and misunderstanding that has long surrounded it. The story of cancer is a story of scientific hubris, paternalism, and misperception, but it is also a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance.
THE STORY OF CANCER: The Emperor of All Maladies examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective and a biographer’s passion. The series artfully weaves three different films in one: a riveting historical documentary; an engrossing and intimate vérité film; and a scientific and investigative report.
The search for a “cure” for cancer is the greatest epic in the history of science. It spans centuries and continents, and like all epics is chock full of heroes, villains, and sudden vertiginous twists. It is a scientific story, but also a deeply human one – of doctors, researchers, and patients, who through courage and occasional hubris, pushed the boundaries of knowledge.
More than one writer has described the experience of having cancer as a journey into a new land in which they must leave behind all that is familiar. Often, this new landscape is harsh and painful, but it need not be. Cancer patients often find deeper dimensions in their relationships, newfound meaning in their lives, spiritual connections and reserves of strength they never knew they had.
Cancer is, at bottom, a disease of mutated genes. We have long known that cancer is caused by the unrestrained division of cells – a kind of malevolent perfection of our own biological drives. But what is new in the last two decades is a much more complete understanding of how and why that cellular proliferation takes place, and how it might be stopped.
Ken Burns has been making documentary films for more than 30 years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, he has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made. The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of Ken’s films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source."
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s accomplishments as both a physician and a Pulitzer Prize winning author are compelling and powerful. A cancer specialist, Sid has devoted his life to caring for victims of cancer, a disease that sickens and kills millions of people around the world each year. As a researcher, his laboratory is on the forefront of discovering new cancer drugs using innovative biological methods.
Barak Goodman is co-founder of Ark Media and a principal producer, director, and writer with the company. His films for Ark Media have been nominated for an Academy Award and won multiple Emmys and Writers Guild Awards, the DuPont-Columbia, and Peabody Awards, the RFK Journalism Prize, and twice been official selections at the Sundance Film Festival.
Ken Burns Presents The Story of Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies A Film by Barak Goodman is a production of Florentine Films, Laura Ziskin Pictures and WETA Washington D.C., in association with Ark Media. Executive Producer and Series Creative Consultant: Ken Burns. Based on the book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D. Producer and Director: Barak Goodman. Executive Producers: Dalton Delan and David S. Thompson for WETA Washington D.C.; and Pamela Oas Williams and Laura Ziskin for Laura Ziskin Pictures. Copyright: Laura Ziskin Pictures and WETA Washington D.C.