May 25, 2018

Latest Ken Burns film focuses on the history of the Mayo Clinic

By Karl Oestreich

Arizona PBS

“The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope & Science” is a new film from Ken Burns that tells the history of the medical center from its 1863 founding in Rochester, Minnesota by William Worrall Mayo. The film’s co-directors, brothers Chris and Erik Ewers, say they knew very little about the topic when they decided to take on the project. Chris says the idea for the film came when Burns went to the clinic and was invited to a dinner where a 90-year-old nun shared some of the center’s history. William Worrall was the man “who started it all.” It was his sons, Will and Charlie, who helped carry on the legacy of Mayo Clinic. The clinic broke ground during the Civil War, and the sons took over when their father retired. The motto of the clinic is “the needs of the patient come first.” Erik says if they learned one thing about the Mayo Clinic, it’s that the history is still applied today. The brothers worked for three years filming and researching, and they agree that the motto holds true.

Reach: Eight, Arizona PBS is a PBS station that has focused on educating children, reporting in-depth on public affairs, fostering lifelong learning and celebrating arts and culture. Its signal reaches 86 percent of the homes in Arizona. With more than 1 million viewers weekly, Eight consistently ranks among the most-viewed public television stations per capita in the country. Eight is a member-supported service of Arizona State University.

Context: The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope and Science tells the story of a unique medical institution that has been called a “Medical Mecca,” the “Supreme Court of Medicine,” and the “place for hope where there is no hope.” The Mayo Clinic began in 1883 as an unlikely partnership between the Sisters of Saint Francis and a country doctor named William Worrall Mayo after a devastating tornado in rural Minnesota. Since then, it has grown into an organization that treats more than a million patients a year from all 50 states and 150 countries. Executive directed by Ken Burns, The Mayo Clinic is a two-hour documentary produced and directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, produced by Julie Coffman, and written by David Blistein. It will air on PBS September 25-26, 2018. You can read more about the film here.

Contact: Jim McVeigh

 

 

 

 

Tags: Arizona PBS, Chris Ewers, Erik Ewers, Ken Burns, Uncategorized

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