A HEALTHY BABY GIRL
Film poster for "A Healthy Baby Girl" with black and white image of mother holding baby.
A HEALTHY BABY GIRL
Film poster for "A Healthy Baby Girl" with black and white image of mother holding baby.
A searing exploration of what happens when science, marketing, and corporate power enter our deepest family relationships

A HEALTHY BABY GIRL

Regular price $135.00
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PEABODY AWARDS | OFFICIAL SELECTION - Sundance Film Festival

Mother-Daughter Love • Family Renewal • Survival • Political Awakening • Community Activism


Date of Completion: 1997 | Run Time: 57 minutes | Language: English | Captions: No | Includes: Transcript | Director: Judith Helfand

A HEALTHY BABY GIRL is an inter-generational story of one family’s response to an ethical and technological crisis, experienced from their home in Merrick, Long Island. Intimate and humorous, it’s also a searing exploration of what happens when science, marketing, and corporate power enter our deepest family relationships. In 1963, filmmaker Judith Helfand’s mother was prescribed the drug diethylstilbestrol (DES), meant to prevent miscarriage and ensure a healthy baby. But technology is rarely a benign midwife. In 1990, at age twenty-five, Helfand was diagnosed with DES-related cervical cancer. She went home to her family to heal from a radical hysterectomy. There she picked up her camera. Her video diary, A HEALTHY BABY GIRL, was shot over five years and goes beyond loss to document mother-daughter love, family renewal, survival, political awakening, and community activism.

Educational Media Reviews Online | Reviewed by Kay Hogan Smith, Retired - University of Alabama at Birmingham, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
"Her resulting film is both intimate and extensive."

Video Librarian | Reviewed by R. Reagan
"A vital resource. Medical school libraries should definitely purchase so the doctors and nurses of tomorrow can be made aware of the huge impact of past medical decisions."

National Women's Health Network | Cindy Pearson
"A must-see....One of the best films ever made which goes beyond facts and figures to show the impact-on an entire family-of corporate disregard for women's health."

New York Newsday | John Anderson
"Turns medical statistics into human beings and as it mixes with the rich affection of the family at its center becomes something irresistible and transforming."

AWARDS
Peabody Awards

Best Documentary | Melbourne International Film Festival
Nominee, Best Documentary | IDA

FESTIVALS
Sundance Film Festival

Chosen for PBS's National Testimonial Campaign