People

Maren Grainger-Monsen, M.D. - Filmmaker in Residence and Program Director

Maren Grainger-Monsen, a physician and award-winning filmmaker, is currently Filmmaker in Residence and Director of the Program in Bioethics and Film at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. She studied film at the London International Film School and received her medical training at the University of Washington and Stanford University School of Medicine.

Grainger-Monsen’s most recent film, Hold Your Breath, follows the dramatic story of an Afghan refugee family through cultural conflicts over medical treatment.  It currently broadcasting on national PBS beginning in April of 2007.  It was featured in a Newsweek magazine special issue on family medicine in an article entitled, “When Cultures Clash,” as well as in an “ABC World News Tonight” with the late Peter Jennings, and won the 2007 Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council.  Hold Your Breath developed out of Grainger-Monsen’s last project, Worlds Apart, a series of award-winning short films on cross-cultural medicine developed for medical education that have met with an overwhelmingly positive reception.  The films are being used in over 750 institutions nationally, including 40% of all US medical schools, as well as for internal staff training at important medical accrediting organizations such as JCAHO and the AMA.  They have also been instrumental in policy reform, such as playing a role in the UNOS Board of Directors’ decision to increase minority access to kidney transplants by revision allocation priority for tissue matching.  Grainger-Monsen's previous work includes The Vanishing Line, a chronicle of her journey toward understanding the art and issues of dying, which was broadcast in 1998 on the national PBS "Point of View" series and again in an encore showing in 2000.  The film has won numerous prestigious awards, including an Emmy Award nomination, as well as First Place at the Nashville Independent Film Festival and Program of the Year Award from the National Hospice Organization.  It was also chosen to represent the United States in 1999 at INPUT, an annual screening event of the best and most provocative documentary films from around the world.  Grainger-Monsen’s other films include Where the Highway Ends: Rural Healthcare in Crisis, which won an Emmy Award, and Grave Words, which was awarded first place in the American Medical Association Film Festival.

Nicole Newnham - Producer

Nicole Newnham is a documentary filmmaker and writer, currently co-producing several projects with Maren Grainger-Monsen at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics Program in Bioethics and Film. She recently co-produced and directed the feature documentary, The Rape of Europa, about the fate of Europe's art treasures during WWII, which is currently being released theatrically before its national broadcast as a two hour PBS special later this year.  She also co-produced the award-winning independent documentary /Sentenced Home/ (72 min., 2006), which follows three Cambodian refugees in Seattle who are deported back to Cambodia after 9/11. Sentenced Home will air this spring on the Emmy-award winning PBS series Independent Lens. Nicole field-produced the Emmy-nominated documentary /Skin/ (53 min., 2004), about the science and culture of human skin, for PBS and National Geographic. She co-produced They Drew Fire (53 min., 2000), a widely-acclaimed special for PBS about the combat artists of World War II, and wrote the companion book distributed by Harper Collins. Nicole was associate producer of/ Eye of the Storm/ (53 min., 1997), a verité profile of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, broadcast worldwide by the BBC, and the Emmy-nominated, six-hour series, /The Human Sexes with Desmond Morris/ 1996). Her film /Unforgettable Face/ screened in 1994 at the Sundance Film Festival. Nicole completed the Graduate Documentary Film Program at Stanford University in 1994.

Mike Seely - Associate Producer

Mike Seely worked as a wildlife biologist, journalist, deejay, and sound recordist in New York, Seattle, and the Bay Area before working in film.  His documentary film works include; Subvertisers, a short documentary about culture jamming; Radio Takeover, recounting the FCC shutdown of San Francisco Liberation Radio; Hush, which contrasts noises in the urban environment with natural sounds in 16mm black-and-white; and Nature's Blueprints, a film about the work and ideas of Eugene Tsui, an eccentric architect who bases his designs on biological forms. His film Radio Grito - about a Spanish language radio show for migrant farmworkers in California - won Best Short Documentary at the 2006 Cinequest FIlm Festival. Mike recently shot and produced a video for the Frontline World website about an innovative humanitarian medical foundation in Ecuador, which he is working to expand into a longer film (to watch the video, click here: Ecuador: Country Doctors). The work explores the myriad challenges doctors face in bringing quality health care to poor, underserved communities in developing countries. Mike completed his MA in documentary film production at Stanford University in 2005.