Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman made this film to highlight a non-profit effort that is making a huge difference in many people’s lives. (Warning: It looks like a real tear-jerker.)
Remote Area Medical is a volunteer medical relief corps that provides free health care services and technical and educational assistance to people in remote areas of the United States and around the world. Their vision, as it appears on the organization’s website, is to be the best at providing free clinic events, without discrimination, which enhance quality of life through the delivery of competent and compassionate healthcare to those who are impoverished, isolated, and underserved.
The film’s press promotion describes the documentary:
Focusing on a single three-day clinic held in the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, Remote Area Medical affords us an insider’s perspective on the ebb and flow of the event – from the tense 3:30 a.m. ticket distribution that determines who gets seen to the routine check-ups that take dramatic turns for the worse, to the risky means to which some patients resort for pain relief. We meet a doctor who also drives an 18-wheeler, a denture maker who moonlights as a jeweler, and the organization’s founder, Stan, who first imagined Remote Area Medical while living as a cowboy in the Amazon rainforest, hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor.
Remote Area Medical opens in New York on Nov. 28, and will be released nationwide on Dec. 5.
[Photo from flickr user Living-Learning Programs]
