Powerful 'American Delivery' Doc on Maternal Healthcare

Seasoned documentary producer Lisa Frank chats with host Candice Bloch about her healthcare-focused projects, namely her recent project American Delivery which focuses on maternal health and childbirth, showcasing diverse birthing experiences and the importance of equitable care. In their conversation, you’ll learn about Lisa’s ongoing collaboration with director Carolyn Jones and how creating documentaries around sensitive topics like end-of-life care and maternal health requires extensive pre-production work. The two discuss the challenges and intricacies of filming in healthcare settings, the importance of postpartum care, and the impact of care deserts on maternal health. Lisa shares insights on midwifery care, the role of fathers, and the need for advocacy in maternal health. They also touch on the influence of media in raising awareness about healthcare issues, advice for getting your mission-driven documentary seen by the right audiences, as well as the importance of nurses, and Lisa's upcoming project on global nurse migration.

Learn more about Lisa’s projects at: https://americannurseproject.com/ 

You can watch American Delivery on PBS at: https://www.pbs.org/show/american-delivery/

American Delivery was also included in Ms. Magazine’s list of favorite feminist documentaries of 2025.

Connect on Socials:
https://www.instagram.com/americannurseproject/
https://www.facebook.com/americannurseproject/
https://x.com/amnurseproject
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-frank-producer/

Transcript

VO  •  00:10
Welcome to Media Makers Spotlight from Women in Film and Video in Washington, D.C. We bring you conversations with industry professionals for behind the screens, insight and inspiration. 

Candice Bloch  •  00:23
Thanks for joining us. I'm your host, Candice Block, and today I'm joined by Lisa Frank, a documentary producer and nonprofit director who guides multimedia projects from inception through distribution with a deep focus on healthcare, nursing, and equity in care. Baltimore-bred and Brooklyn-based, Lisa holds a BS in speech from Northwestern University and spent several formative years in Paris as a performing artist and documentary producer. For the past 16 years, she has collaborated with director Carolyn Jones on award-winning films and photography projects, including the multi-award winning American Nurse Project. Their work has helped influence U.S. healthcare policy, notably through a congressional screening of their film Defining Hope, and their most recent film American Delivery, which continues this impact-driven storytelling. Their documentaries have reached millions of viewers on PBS and the Discovery Network, and three are featured in the American Film Showcase, the U.S. Department of State's cultural diplomacy program. Today, we're going to dive more into American Delivery, their documentary about maternal health that follows various birth stories. So welcome to the show, Lisa. Thanks for having me, Candice. I'm so happy to be here. Well, as we said in the intro, you have this healthcare focus. So I'm curious, what draws you to healthcare as this focus area for your projects? And when did you connect with Carolyn Jones? I'm curious which of those came first or did they happen at the same time? 

Lisa Frank  •  01:46
That's a good question. The Carolyn Jones connection happened first, and we kind of fell into the healthcare storytelling. And along the way, we've both had personal experiences that sort of gave a depth to the work beyond what we're experiencing through the filmmaking. But yeah, the Carolyn Jones story is kind of a funny story. So I had been, as you said in the bio, I had been living in France. Coincidentally, she lived in France at the same time, but we didn't know each other. I moved to New York. I was doing a combination of performing, writing, producing, and also doing translation work because I had lived in France and loved translating French. So I got a job for this guy. He was executive producing a documentary about the presidential elections in France, the first time Nicolas Sarkozy ended up being elected. And he just basically needed a producer who was more or less a translator. But the job evolved to where I was waking up at three in the going under my loft bed in my East Village apartment and cold calling French politicians, including like, you know, people we know about now, including Sarkozy, including Le Pen and many others, like trying to convince them to be part of this documentary. So that was my first ever documentary job. And I loved it. Cut to a few years later, again, working in New York in a play, assistant director of that production was working with Carolyn on a documentary about 100 people living in New York City who represented the world's population. And they needed a line producer and a production coordinator to find those people. And it was really aligned with the work I had done on the French documentary. So I joined her team. It was meant to be like a one month gig. And into it, maybe three weeks into the job, she said, I have a proposition for you. We're going on a trip around the world next week. Do you want to come? And that was 16 years ago. We've been working together ever since. We've traveled all around the world and worked on any number of films together. So it's been really a joy. 

Candice Bloch  •  03:44
That's cool. And I love that you kind of fell into producing. This industry in particular, I find always has such fascinating, you know, sort of falling backwards or connections or random ways to get into it and, you know, all kinds of stuff. 

Lisa Frank  •  03:58
I think that's absolutely right, especially because it's like a funny skill set, right? So you don't have to have gone to school for filmmaking to be a producer. You just have to be able to work with different people and come up with solutions to problems. 

Candice Bloch  •  04:12
Yeah. And, you know, and also just humans in general are natural, like, storytellers. And then stories are about so many different things that we all bring personal and varied experiences to it. 

Lisa Frank  •  04:23
Absolutely. Yeah. And the storytelling thing, for sure. I mean, there's so many people with a theater background who wind up in this profession because it's still storytelling and just a different kind. So there was a logic to all of that. 

Candice Bloch  •  04:35
So the past projects that you've done with Carolyn, Defining Hope, In Case of Emergency, The American Nurse, and even this latest one, American Delivery, they all require filming in really intimate and sometimes difficult and personal situations. So how much pre-production work is there to get comfortable with the families? And for example, like with the mothers and things like that, when you're filming births and so that you aren't an added stress and distraction when you're documenting these stories. 

Lisa Frank  •  05:05
It's a great question. There's a ton, but it's not just that. It's, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with HIPAA and patient privacy laws. And so it's gotten even in the, you know, maybe 14 or 15 years since we first did the American Nurse Project, it's gotten much harder to film in hospital settings. So a lot of my job in pre-production, too, is just dealing with legal departments and working through location agreements and figuring out what would the hospital be comfortable with to even let us bring a camera through the doors. And that's a very wide range, too. We've worked with hospital systems who are like locking us down on one hallway in one room with one patient. That's it. And, you know, they have to really protect their patients and make sure we're not inadvertently getting somebody in the background or, you know, hearing or seeing anything that we don't have consent to see. So that's the first level is just getting those hospitals on board. And then the next level is the patients, which is also a wide range. I mean, in American delivery, we were filming in this hospital called Metro Health in Cleveland. And the team there was very supportive and really believed in showcasing the work that they were doing. And they felt that they're giving women really good care during delivery. So they were kind of great, you know, salespeople in a way, too, to the patients to say, I know it's crazy to film your birth, but are you open to this? And then you'll get all these beautiful photos and videos to keep of this experience. And I think that when people think of it that way and they want to tell their story, I mean, that's the universal thing through all of this, right? People really, if they feel someone can learn from their experience or have a better experience, you know, they want to participate in that and help. That's not to say that we didn't have people turning us down. Yeah, I was going to say, like, that's a pretty big ask. 

Candice Bloch  •  06:55
So it's interesting. Yeah. But it's cool to hear that sometimes the hospitals were sort of like also advocating and helping feel like, no, there's good that can come of this. And yeah, the documentation of that story itself. 

Lisa Frank  •  07:07
Absolutely. And I think there's a trust piece, too. I mean, people know that our work, we're not out to expose anyone and make anyone look bad. If we were doing that kind of a film, I think we would have a different experience. We're not like the Michael Moore of, you know, healthcare documentarians. So we want to show solutions and things that are working well. That's not to say, you know, that what MetroHealth is doing, you know, I don't necessarily believe that like hospital-based labor and delivery is the way to go for everybody. On the other hand, that's what the majority of women are getting in America. And so if you're going to get that care anyway, let's show you how it can be done well and let's show you some best practices. So I think the hospital believes in what they're doing. 

Candice Bloch  •  07:49
Yeah, I like that sort of like it's like a positive reinforcement approach of here's here's a variety of options, but here's how it can be done well. But so also you wanted to showcase a variety of different birthing plans and stories. How did you go about deciding what regions and styles and types of scenarios that you wanted to capture? Did you have like a checklist of we want to do like a midwife? We want to do a cesarean. We want to do something in another country, whatever. And then how did you, can you talk a little more about the process of like finding those particular pieces of the puzzle? Absolutely. 

Lisa Frank  •  08:27
That was a long process and journey too. It started as a global project, actually. So we were really looking at the U.N. sustainable development goals around maternal health. We knew that based on funding, too, that we had sort of seed funding initially. And we knew that to like get the most bang for our buck, we would start in the U.S. with a U.S.-based story. And so looking at maternal health and how far we were falling behind on those statistics relative. I mean, other health care statistics were not doing great either. But it's really dramatic when you looked at how many women are dying and having bad outcomes in childbirth in the U.S. compared to our peer countries. So we knew that this was a good story to start with, but we were planning to also show other countries. We actually had tickets to go to Israel on October 13th of 2020. What year was that? 2023. So we had our bags packed and we were ready to go when when October 7th happened. But the reason was that Israel had this wonderful standard of care for all women. And it's a rich country, but it's also providing care to a lot of lower income women who are having multiple pregnancies, multiple births, and still with wonderfully positive outcomes. So that was meant to be kind of this really gold standard story that we didn't end up getting the chance to tell. Tanzania was part of it because we wanted to show a place where they really still have bad statistics around maternal health and maternal mortality. but they're making improvements. So that statistic where they, you know, they were able to cut those rates by 50% in 10 years by standardizing care and training, you know, really training the nurses and midwives. When we were in Tanzania, they would have these 18 year olds that just graduated from nursing school. And you're looking at this child, you know, and thinking, how is this? But that person is responsible for delivering, you know, tens, dozens of babies that day because the head midwife doesn't have time to do everything herself. So she's there in between deliveries, trying to train and trying to mentor these other nurses and midwives. So that was unbelievable to watch, but we just saw how committed Restituta is the name of the certified nurse midwife we were following in Tanzania. The fact that she could handle 60 patients at once and resuscitate a baby and safely deliver this patient who was a VBAC patient, which in the U.S. many doctors won't even allow, you know, a VBAC delivery, a vaginal birth after cesarean. And yet everything went smoothly. So it was a really eye-opening experience for sure. Yeah. It sounds, it's very 

Candice Bloch  •  10:59
traditional documentary experience to say we kind of had this one plan and you adapt and adjust as you go with what you're even getting. So that also is like, you know, when you select these people and they agree to be filmed, you have no idea what's going to come up, obviously. And even one of the stories in American Delivery, it's they had a plan and it went another way, you know, that happens a lot. So it's interesting to be able to follow along through that. So how long did, would you say the whole process took for this film because of not only finding the women, but before their birth, the birthing situations, experience, but then also some of the after as well, which is, as the documentary points out, a very critical time that is often overlooked is the time after giving birth. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, the whole process took about two years. And then 

Lisa Frank  •  11:54
with all of the post-production and distribution work, another year, year and a half. But I didn't fully answer your question because some of the women we got to meet ahead of time and really plan with them before their deliveries. Many of them we met the same day. Oh, wow. So it was really, you know, and in the case of the patient Aisha in Tanzania, you know, we met her that same day. It was like, we're there. We're talking to the hospital administration. What patients do you have today? And then they decided, you know, this would they, you know, they give us some without revealing private information. They sort of explained to us what the options are. We say, oh, okay, that sounds really good. Then they have to go and get the consent and get the form signed. And then they invite us in to meet the patient and talk to her. So that was all happening while she's in labor. So complicated, but luckily still in like early stages of labor. So she was able to calmly consent and think it through and talk to her mom and make a decision. Right. And then say, OK, I'm OK with it. And then we got to follow her the next day, which was a crazy story unto itself. But without staying on the Tanzania story for too long, She left the hospital. We were planning to go back the next morning and find her. Oh, wow. She was hungry and couldn't afford the food at the hospital. And so they were looking for us. We were planning to come that afternoon. She couldn't find us. So they decided to leave. For her to leave required taking this like tuck tuck ride to a bus, public bus, and then hiring this motorcycle taxi driver to drive her, her mom and her baby on a motorcycle down a dirt road to their village. 

Candice Bloch  •  13:32
We got there. What's that? Yeah. The day after giving birth. Day after giving birth. 

Lisa Frank  •  13:36
So we found out that she had left. We panicked because we wanted to find her, not just for purposes of filming. We wanted to see how she was doing. We had brought her gift. We wanted to make sure, you know, that everything was okay. Luckily, our van driver knew the name of her remote village. We like hightail it out of there. We get to the taxi stand of all these guys with their motorcycle taxis. Did you see a woman with a baby and a grandma? And this guy's like, yes, yes, they just went down that way. They went down that way. So we're driving down this dirt road. We get stopped at a checkpoint because it's like a mining community with a gold mine. So they don't want us like speeding down the road in our van. And then we found them on this road, on this motorcycle. We couldn't believe we caught up with them. We were so relieved and happy. They were relieved to see us. We were able to take them out and, you know, buy them a meal in the local cafe and then go, you know, see her home and her village. So that was a miraculous recovery so that we could sort of complete that story in a way and make sure that we were able to keep in touch with her and her family. It made for a 

Candice Bloch  •  14:42
really memorable and beautiful shot, too, on the motorcycle. I love that shot. It's like my favorite 

Lisa Frank  •  14:48
shot in the film, which is why I probably keep talking about it. But yeah, when people see that in a theater, they laugh out loud because it's so shocking to see, not in a bad way, like, you know, but it's just so surprising and startling to see a mom and a baby on the back of a motorcycle with a grandma and the motorcycle driver. It's just a crazy, crazy idea. When here, 

Candice Bloch  •  15:10
we can't even leave the hospital without a car seat. Yeah. Although, I mean, it is interesting to see the variation throughout even this country. And one of the things that the documentary brings up is sort of the like care deserts. And so I'm curious if you could just because this is about this subject, I mean, we're going to talk mostly about the production side of things because that's what we do here. But I'm curious if you could kind of shed a little more light on like those care deserts and things that are kind of one of the major problems that we are facing in the United States about having this consistency of good quality care for for birth situations. 

Lisa Frank  •  15:47
Absolutely. There are so many things to talk about when we talk about maternal health and how we can make it better. One of the big things is since 95 percent of women are going to give birth in a hospital setting, they need to have a hospital and they need to have a good hospital. So we were in Mississippi. We didn't end up being able to include that in the film because we didn't get access to this hospital. But essentially in this part of Mississippi, women are driving an hour and a half, two hours to care because they don't have a provider in their area. And so there are these horrific stories of women giving birth on the side of the road. You know, I mean, that's obviously the extreme example, but not being able to access your prenatal care is another part of that. If you live an hour and a half away from your provider, we know that with so many hospital closures around the country, maternal care and labor and delivery is not where hospitals would choose to invest. We're not building new labor and delivery units in rural areas. And so unfortunately, what that means is, I mean, we heard stories in Alaska. This is not totally surprising, but women have to like fly into the bigger city a month before their due date just to make sure that they have access to care. So those are kind of those extreme examples. But even here in New York City, the statistics between some of the failing hospitals and some of the best hospitals in the country, which are both within miles of each other. For a Black woman, it's a nine to one odds. So she's like nine times more likely to die or have a bad outcome in the worst hospitals than in the best. And when you factor all that in, even though we know that statistically Black women are three to four times more likely than their white counterparts to have a bad outcome, when you factor in those hospital differences, it shrinks that gap quite dramatically. So we do know that when hospital systems have the right kind of care, when they're really listening to patients, when they're training their staff, when there are staff that look like their patient population, that makes a difference as well. So there's a lot of things that we need to consider. But the thing that rose to the surface for this, and you see in the film a lot, was this idea of midwifery care. Because we don't know about that very much in the United States. And people think and hear about a midwife, and no one's recommended that to them. And they think it sounds a little crazy. Someone in our film said that people think it's a Harry Potter word. And it is true. You know, no one said to me when I was like finding the right practice for my two births. Oh, did you think about having a midwife for your care? It's like, no, you're 35. So let's let's put you on that track of, you know, older mom, traditional care and getting all the high risk type of care, even if you're not really high risk for any other reason. So that rose to the surface for us. So we really wanted to showcase what it looked like when there were certified nurse midwives practicing independently or in conjunction with a hospital system like at the University of Kentucky, which we thought was an excellent model of care, where if there's a risk or if something happens during the delivery, you have that whole team there to support the birth. But that women get to choose to give birth the way they would want, which means if it's unmedicated, that's their choice. You know, they can walk around, they can eat, not be tethered to a bed. Or if they want like certain levels of medication, they can have that too. 

VO  •  19:10
Yeah, it was nice to see the options. 

Candice Bloch  •  19:12
I mean, I know, you know, we all have our personal experiences with people in our lives and different scenarios. And, you know, I also found it, you did talk about it in the doc as well. I heard the sort of the way that in the U.S. a lot of births are, yes, they're sort of default to the hospital and there should be more options. Because as you said, like the vast majority are not going to be overcomplicated. It's a thing we've been doing for millennia. You know, it's usually goes well. But the whole like laying down flat in a hospital bed now versus the way is perhaps more natural of like squatting or sitting or, you know, you know, different ways of giving birth. And then there's like water births and all these different things. So I loved seeing the different options and the different scenarios. I also think it was really great to see in all of the, whether it was, you know, in Tanzania or whatever, as you said, or in the U.S. and all of these different scenarios that every single one did the skin to skin baby on the mom immediately. And I was like, oh, it's good that there's like a standard kind of understanding of that importance. 

VO  •  20:17
I love that you caught that. 

Lisa Frank  •  20:20
And that was really intentional and important for us, too, because we asked people, you know, I know in California, that's a wonderful hospital. they really wanted to showcase like the best practices for a C-section. But they all said that they would say the same thing, like, you know, it might not be possible if there's a complication, just be aware. You know, we're going to do the best we can to give as much skin to skin as we can. But, you know, even in a C-section when that baby's really separated from the mom, like that is really important if they're able to. And in that case, they were. They were to give them a lot of time skin to skin. So it was beautiful. 

Candice Bloch  •  20:53
Yeah. And also like with premature babies and everything, but just the amount of time that the skin to skin like really helps them. It's such a wonderful thing to know that like, hey, we're humans. It's not all just like sterile medical stuff. We understand that there's that connection there. 

Lisa Frank  •  21:06
Yeah. And we didn't get to really show this, but also the dads, you know, when my older son Luca was born, there was a little bit of a complication, but they were able to give the baby to Max and he was able to do skin to skin while I wasn't. And that works too. And one of the things I loved, which is not actually in the film, Toni Tipton, who's the certified nurse midwife in Dayton, Ohio, who's running the black breastfeeding class, if you remember her. She talks about the dad so much and like, why do we leave the dads out of this? You know, they're in the room. They can help. There's so much that they can do. And when you include them also in the prenatal care and preparing them for the delivery, you know, but skin to skin is a great example where where they can be involved, too. 

Candice Bloch  •  21:48
Yeah, that's that's good to know. It's it's a great reminders to people as well. And speaking of those complications that may come up and everything, I thought one of the important messages that really the documentary conveyed was in that, you know, post delivery time that the vast like that a lot of the issues with maternal deaths are from hemorrhages after giving birth and postpartum complications and stuff as well. So I was just curious because you talked about that in the documentary and there's people that were advocating for better care in those situations. Have you seen advancements based on the people that were advocating for that? And like I know that the documentary is to educate and also I would imagine like help advance like improvements. Have you been seeing any improvements in that? And then also how would you recommend like individuals who are listening advocate for themselves for those types of things? 

Lisa Frank  •  22:42
Absolutely. Absolutely. Don't let me forget the last part of your question because that's important too. So I wish I could say that we've seen a lot of improvement. With hemorrhage in particular, there's been an extraordinary amount of improvement. And I think that has to do with hospitals understanding what the best practices are. So we explained in the film that with hemorrhage, you need to sort of measure the blood loss, be aware of the blood loss. And so that's been something that's become like standard of care, I think, throughout most hospitals. So that's a really good thing. I think in most states, they've adopted these kind of state standards where they're then training all of the hospitals to follow the same practices. So hemorrhage is something that has like been a dramatically reduced, not to say that we never have hemorrhage anymore, but if they can get blood products quickly to the patient, then, you know, usually they can, they can solve for that. With things like preeclampsia, the tragedy is that we just saw a tragic death of a nurse midwife in South Carolina last week. And she was a Black mom, first-time mom. Her name's Janelle Green Smith, I believe. And she had been already so outspoken on this issue. And she went into nurse midwifery to protect other Black moms. And then this happened to her. So she got severe preeclampsia and then had an emergency C-section. The baby was okay. Then I think something happened, rupture with the C-section, which is one of the complications from C-section. It's a major surgery. and so there can be hemorrhage and other complications later and scar tissue issues that then appear as a complication for your next pregnancy. But in her case, she died a few days after giving birth. So whether or not, you know, it's just the statistics show us that Black moms are so much more likely to have those outcomes. So obviously we're not listening. 

VO  •  24:35
There's some breakdown in communication there. 

Lisa Frank  •  24:38
You know, I can't speak to that exact example, but this is happening again and again where a woman might say, I'm feeling something. I'm in pain. This doesn't feel right. And we talked about that in the film, too. It doesn't feel right. You know what your body should feel like in that baseline. Yeah. And so, you know, when something doesn't feel right. So the best advice, which I think Dominique Moore, who's the patient from the Brooklyn Birthing Center in the film, and she says at the end, just speak up. You know, I want women to be able to have their voice and speak up because you know your body better than anyone else. And what we're hoping with this film is just for people to say, OK, I know that there are choices. I know that one of the most important things is choosing my providers right off the bat and choosing where what hospital or freestanding birthing center or midwifery care or doula care. Making all those choices ahead of time is like a huge piece of the puzzle. And once you have that in place, then who's my support person? Is it my partner? you know is it a doula is it another family member having the right support in the room so if you can't speak up for yourself because something goes awry that person can be your advocate and that's that's so critical too but I wish we could all be Dominique because she is somebody who's not afraid to speak up when she felt something you know um but maybe we can all channel Dominique 

Candice Bloch  •  25:57
in some way well and also uh there are plenty of women who do speak up and just aren't respected or heard. So we still need advances on that. There's way too many instances of women or anyone saying like, I know my body, this is what I think something is wrong. And then they're ignored. So hopefully, hopefully there can be improvements in that as well. Exactly. A hundred 

Lisa Frank  •  26:20
percent. And that's one of the things too, where, you know, obviously if it's a high risk birth, then it's a different category. If you know that you have, you know, diabetes, hypertension, some of these issues that would lend itself to being a high risk. But for women who are low risk, giving them those options to not be medicalized, to not get on that conveyor belt of childbirth, you know, we know statistically that really does reduce these other bad outcomes. You're less likely to have to have Pitocin, less likely to have to have a C-section if you can let the process start naturally, especially for your first for first time moms, because we know your body needs more time. So just being able to give women more time. And as you said, listening to them when they 

Candice Bloch  •  27:03
do speak up. Yeah. Yeah. So there's also I was just curious. So given the impact of media overall, both nonfiction and fiction, how do you feel about movies and shows and things like even currently right now, there's like Die My Love, which talks about postpartum depression. It's sort of about that. And huge hits like The Pit, which is like winning all these awards and everything. And, you know, also like Grey's Anatomy, ER, you know, all these nurse Jackie things over the years. How do you feel about those like connecting audiences with the subject matter of health care? And like, should those shows have a responsibility to also kind of bring up these particular issues that maybe, you know, because not everyone goes through all of these intense situations, but can be helping kind of drive improvements in case someone should need it down the line. So that's kind of, I guess, goes back into that advocacy as well a little bit. But yeah, I don't know what your 

Lisa Frank  •  27:59
thoughts on the nonfiction or the fiction side of things. I love that question. I mean, I wish I could say that, you know, TV shows have a responsibility to educate the public because they do, right? But at the same time, you know, they're there to entertain. Here's what I know, because I'm not a nurse or a healthcare provider at all, but now I've spent a lot of years, you know, with the healthcare community. I know that nurses, by and large, hated Nurse Jackie because they resented that depiction of their profession. And they felt, I know this because when we came out with the American Nurse book and film, which was the first nursing thing we did 15 years ago, we heard so many times that they felt seen and they felt seen for the first time. And they felt like their depiction in the media was never accurate. They're always relegated to the background, the sidekick, the love interest. You know, nurses never felt like they were able to be front and center other than Nurse Jackie, which then there's like a whole, right, I never saw it, but addiction. 

Candice Bloch  •  29:00
I never saw it either. I just saw some previews and like she would smoke or something. And I was like, that's not good for anyone, let alone a nurse. Yeah, no, I think, and I think she was, she was addicted to something. 

Lisa Frank  •  29:10
Yeah, she was like addicted to drugs or something. Right. So, so that wasn't the depiction that I think most people were looking for. I have heard and I've seen a couple episodes of The Pit, which seems really well done. And I get why it's so popular. I've heard from the nursing community that people feel that it's a more accurate depiction. 

VO  •  29:25
Yeah, I've heard that as well. 

Lisa Frank  •  29:26
Right. Of how the emergency department is run. From what I've seen from emergency departments, it seems, you know, we saw a lot of mundane cases in emergency departments. We did a film called In Case of Emergency, which was about emergency department nursing pre-COVID. Then COVID happened. we already had an edit of the film done, but then we went back to a hospital in New Jersey to film during COVID. But in that case, you know, like a lot of people coming into the emergency department with just like an infection or a headache or whatever, in the pit, it's of course, like the much more dramatic drama. But I do think that the nurses feel at least that their role is better depicted and more accurately depicted. But yeah, back to your original point, like, wouldn't it be great though? 

Candice Bloch  •  30:12
Right. I mean, I think at least they can help shine a light on sort of like the existence of certain things. Yeah. And bring up occasional things if they are trying, if they're aiming to be more accurate, like the pit is being praised for being, for example. Yeah. You could see a scenario in there and have a little bit more of like an understanding even about it. I'm curious if you've heard of the show Offspring from Australia. No. I think you would love it. I loved it. it ran from 2010 to 2017 and it centers around like an OBGYN and all this stuff. And it's just, it's not only about like family dynamics and everything, but because it's this whole like birthing center in the, like the, that part of a hospital, you see all of these different birth scenarios throughout it. And it's just really interesting and fascinating. It's an Australian take on stuff, but I love the show. I recommend it to everyone, but yeah, I think you would enjoy But it's another one where it's like, yeah, it talks about different examples and kind of as like a pivot as well. Now, it also helps elevate the importance of, as you were saying, like nurses and all of that and how too often it's like, oh, they're not a doctor or something. But it's like, no, they're so vitally important. So I'm curious if you could talk to us about your upcoming project, The Global Nurse. 

Lisa Frank  •  31:31
Oh, yes. Thank you for mentioning that. But we are, it's a really interesting project. We're working on a new film. We're not sure when it's coming out or we're working on the edit right now, but it's about nurses migrating around the world. You know, essentially the way that we have sort of this global health workforce, if you think about it, like if you've ever been in the hospital, have you seen, have you been cared for by somebody who was from another country? Most likely, yes. You know, and that includes doctors and nurses. But I think that a lot of people are aware huge group of Filipino nurses that work in the United States. There's a lot of nurses now coming from other countries as well. Nigeria now is educating a lot of nurses that are leaving the country. So what's happening is we don't have enough nurses and we also don't have a pipeline set up to educate enough nurses and train them in our country. It's really expensive, right? We don't have enough professors. We don't have enough places to place them in hospitals to get their training. And it's relatively cheaper to bring in already highly trained, highly educated nurses from another part of the world. But of course, we know that it's a finite resource. And then that place that they're coming from all of a sudden has their own issues with a nursing shortage. The Philippines specifically has had a system for many years where this was part of their strategy all along. They have these wonderful universities. They train all these nurses knowing that they can't employ them all in their country, knowing that this is like an export. So these human beings are sort of this commodity being exported. And so there's three stories that we've been following. One nurse from the Philippines, one from India, and one from Ghana. They're all different stories because they all sort of started their journey at different moments. The nurse from Ghana moved to the United States when she was 12 or 13. So she was educated here in terms of her nursing degree. But she goes back to Ghana all the time because her goal is really to help train, capacity build, give equipment. So when we went with her to Ghana, it was really incredible to see the highly trained nurses are fantastic. They have all these wonderful, eager students, but then you talk to the government officials and they know that there are no jobs to place these people, or they have to wait for three years until they can get a placement. And so, so many people are going to nursing school with the stated intention of leaving the country. And so getting to the United States is kind of the gold standard because I think the pay and the type of you can bring your family, you can bring your spouse or your children. Obviously, it's all a little bit in flux right now, but those visas have been able to continue as far as I know. If not, they can go to the Middle East where they could get paid maybe four times what they would get paid at home, but as opposed to 10 times in the United States. But then the conditions are sometimes really, really awful for women that are foreign workers in certain countries. So it's a complicated issue. We're hoping to shed some light on just the importance. We want to just remind people that this sort of like a beautiful story of immigration in a way, reminding people these are people coming to the country that are so highly educated. They are contributing so much, you know. And so any idea that we would treat them badly or not appreciate what they're contributing to our country and our health care is really terrifying. So that's where we are with it. We're somewhere in the middle of the edit. 

VO  •  35:03
And we'll keep an eye on that. 

Candice Bloch  •  35:05
So you have been involved in these projects, you know, as you said, from the beginning all the way through distribution and like audience engagement and all of that. So do you have any advice that you could maybe give to fellow documentarians about getting their projects seen by especially these more like impact driven ones and like issue driven documentaries about getting their projects seen by the most effective audience for whatever cause they might be championing or even how to get these potentially less sexy subject matters seen by even more people? 

Lisa Frank  •  35:36
We have always focused on who really wants to see these films. And, you know, in many cases, that's a nursing or health care community. In the case of American Delivery, you know, a lot of midwifery groups have been interested. A lot of students, too, because it's so important for students to be able to help, you know, figure out their own path. But the thing that's worked really well for us is connecting with those organizations statewide or national organizations for nursing, for health care. In the case of Defining Hope, which was the film we did about hospice and palliative care and people making choices at the end of life, we were able to connect with a lot of groups that were interested in educating. 

Candice Bloch  •  36:16
And how early are you connecting with those groups in the process? 

Lisa Frank  •  36:19
It depends on the project. You know, for this, for American Delivery, we had an advisory team, which were sort of these professors that are like the upper echelons of the nursing world. They were involved with us from the beginning. And so then anytime we needed to be introduced, like we felt so fortunate to have this group of mostly women who would say, oh, well, let me call my friend at the American Academy of Nursing or any of the nurse midwifery groups, et cetera. So we were connected with them from early on and letting them know that we were working on the project. And then when it was time to have screenings, have premieres, have film festivals, we have this built-in audience already to pull from. So absolutely, my advice is to figure out who's your target audience, who are these niche audiences. is, you know, cold call the organization because they can use your film, right, to promote whatever their issue is. So there's no reason not to get them involved. And in some cases, they may even have funding to support a series of screenings within their organization. So that kind of thing has been great. And then beyond that, of course, we don't want it to just go to that niche audience because we and they want the broader public to hear about this topic. So for American Delivery, it was important for us to have it broadcast on PBS stations. And it's on PBS.org because we just we wanted to reach as many people as as possible. 

Candice Bloch  •  37:41
Yeah, affects us in all in different ways. So if people want to learn more about the projects that you have done, you mentioned that American Delivery is available on PBS. That's where I watched it. So that that's available there. But where online could people go to learn more about these different projects and keep an eye on what's coming up as well? 

Lisa Frank  •  38:00
Great. We have a website called AmericanNurseProject.com. Everything apparently has American in the title now. And so all of our films that have like a nursing thread can be found there. And so those are the four feature documentaries and the new project will eventually be there as well. So AmericanNurseProject.com. 

Candice Bloch  •  38:20
Wonderful. I still have a few more questions I could have asked, but per usual, I always go longer than I should. So I'm just going to take this opportunity now to say thank you so, so much for talking with us. This is really great. It's really great topics. They're beautifully made. One thing I was going to ask as well, but I can kind of skip it now, is just they're all really beautifully made. So I was curious with the cinematography and the editing and the similar style throughout, like how much of the team is the same through each of these projects. Do you want me to answer that or are we out of time? Yeah, I guess. 

Lisa Frank  •  38:55
It's mostly the same team. Thank you for asking that. Yeah, we have this amazing cinematographer named Jakob Insek and Carolyn Jones as the director, myself as producer, and I'm the sound recordist as well. 

Candice Bloch  •  39:08
I noticed you have, yeah, you want an on-set sound credit in American Delivery. 

Lisa Frank  •  39:12
Yeah, so that's usually the team. And then we have another DP named Rob Gorley, who's incredibly talented, who's been working with us as well on the new project. And then editors, we've worked with this fabulous editor named Chelsea Smith and Laura Israel for a long time. We've had a few other like really talented editors that have come and gone on different projects when we needed an extra set of hands. But we've had a really core team for a long time. That's wonderful. 

Candice Bloch  •  39:38
Well, it's a great team making great work. So thank you so much for creating these documentaries first and foremost, and then also for talking with us today about how you make them. Thank you so much, Candice. It was really a pleasure. 

VO  •  39:50
Thanks for listening to Media Maker Spotlight from Women in Film and Video. To learn more about WIF, visit wif.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f.f and edited by Michelle Kim with audio production and mix by Steve Lack Audio and Ed Saltzman. Subscribe to continue learning from more amazing media makers. Please visit mediamakerspotlight.com for more information. That's a wrap!