Dive Brief:
- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, famous for his films that have included coverage of the Civil War and baseball, is looking to the Mayo Clinic to serve as an upcoming film subject.
- Burns has been working on the film for more than a year, and was filming locally last week around the Mayo Clinic base in Rochester, Minnesota, the clinic told the Post Bulletin.
- The upcoming two-hour film is expected to come out in fall 2018 as part of the "Ken Burns Presents: The Next Generation" series.
Dive Insight:
The film is reported to be in the early stages of development with little detail yet being made public aside from a small promotion on the website of the Better Angels Society, which raises funds to support Burns' film projects.
It describes the film as one that will chronicle the history of the institution, beginning "from its 19th century roots as an unlikely partnership between a country doctor and the Sisters of Saint Francis — forged in response to a devastating tornado in 1883 — to its position today as a worldwide model for collaborative patient care, research and education."
News of the production came as the Mayo Clinic also made headlines for a new partnership with Arizona State University, in which the pair say they plan to collaborate on health education, patient care and research, according to the Arizona Daily Star. Dr. Wyatt Decker, CEO of the Mayo Clinic Arizona, highlighted the arrangement builds on more than a decade of collaboration between the institutions and it notably does not involve any form of merger or acquisition.