The Athena Film Festival at Barnard College (AFF) has introduced Jennifer Vanderbes because the third winner of the annual Alfred P. Sloan Athena List Development Grant for her Athena List-winning script “The Gatekeeper.”
“The Gatekeeper” is a historic drama primarily based on the story of Frances Kelsey, an FDA medical reviewer who fought a significant pharmaceutical agency to maintain the drug thalidomide off the American market within the early Sixties. The script relies on “Wonder Drug,” Vanderbes’ personal non-fiction guide, which was additionally supported by the Sloan Foundation. The guide can be printed by Random House in June 2023.
Vanderbes will obtain $20,000 to assist advance her script to the subsequent stage of growth. The fest will host a reception and dwell script-reading December 7 at Barnard College in New York City.
“Support from the Athena Film Festival’s Sloan Foundation Development Grant will help bring to the screen this important STEM story about the largest drug scandal of the 20th century,” mentioned Vanderbes. “Frances Kelsey was a unicorn of her day – a woman who held both a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and an M.D. She spent years battling government bureaucracy and corporate interests to keep thalidomide off the American market, and her scientific brilliance, moral integrity, and personal pluck make her a fabulous heroine, ripe for the screen, as the centerpiece of an epic battle against Big Pharma.”
Finalists for the 2022 Alfred P. Sloan Athena List Development grant included “Ray of Life” by Kate Sheffield and “Tidal Disruption” by Kiran Deol.
AFF’s partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation goals to bolster the pipeline of girls filmmakers working to focus on the significance of girls within the sciences.
Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director on the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, commented, “We are thrilled to partner with the Athena Film Festival to announce the third annual winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Development grant, part of our nationwide program to support films depicting scientific themes or characters and to highlight the contributions of women and underrepresented groups. We are proud to support Jennifer Vanderbes and her script ‘The Gatekeeper,’ based on a book previously supported by our Book Program that tells the story of another pioneering ‘hidden figure’ in STEM and the obstacles and prejudice she had to overcome to safeguard human health.”
Melissa Silverstein, Artistic Director and Co-Founder of the AFF — and Women and Hollywood’s Founder and Publisher — added, “Our ongoing relationship with the Sloan Foundation has brought so many rich, important and mostly unknown STEM stories of women leaders to life. These women have had a significant impact in our world. The story of Frances Kelsey is one of those stories, and we are so thrilled to be a part of getting this story the attention it deserves.”
The thirteenth annual Athena Film Festival will happen March 2-5, 2023 on Barnard’s campus in New York City.