The Director
Maren Grainger-Monsen, MD, has made her mark as an award-winning physician filmmaker. She is filmmaker-in-residence and director of the bioethics and film program at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics in Palo Alto, Calif. She studied at the London Film School and received her medical training at the University of Washington in Seattle and Stanford University School of Medicine.
“I have really enjoyed using all of my medical background and knowledge and applying it toward film,” Dr. Grainger-Monsen says of her position at Stanford, which she has held since 1998. “It’s very grounding. It gives you a purpose.”
Her one-hour documentary “Rare,” which features a family with a very uncommon genetic disease, aired last August on PBS. Another film, “The Revolutionary Optimists,” follows a group of aspiring youngsters in the slums of Calcutta, India, who battle poverty and transform their neighborhoods from the inside out. One-hour and 80-minute versions of the film are slated to air on the PBS series “Independent Lens” as part of the Women and Girls Lead Global partnership.
–Dan Hale, MD, FAAP, a pediatric hospitalist in the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston
Dr. Grainger-Monsen co-produced and co-directed both films with Nicole Newnham, an independent documentary filmmaker who is in residence at Stanford’s bioethics and film program.
As an undergraduate art history major, Dr. Grainger-Monsen became interested in social and ethical issues in medicine. Later, films shown in medical school struck a chord with her. She was amazed at how images could resonate with viewers and trigger animated debate. During the summer between her first and second years of medical school, she was inspired to study film at New York University.
Dr. Grainger-Monsen eventually trained in emergency medicine at Stanford and completed a fellowship in palliative care at Stanford-affiliated Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital. For years, she split her career between working in community ER clinics and producing films. Her films are large-scale projects that may take five years or longer to make, and she raises all the funds to bring them to fruition.
“I really do find documentary filmmaking tremendously gratifying,” Dr. Grainger-Monsen says of the chance “to talk with all different kinds of people in all different situations and walk in their shoes, with them, for a time. That is what I’m trying to share with the audience.”
In creating character-driven documentaries, she aims to spark discussions about important issues in contemporary medicine. “I hope my films can help increase understanding and empathy,” she says, “and result in improvements to the delivery of healthcare and reduction of disparities on multiple levels.”
Susan Kreimer is a freelance writer in New York.