Jennifer Vanderbes — whose script about FDA medical reviewer Frances Kelsey was on the Black List-inspired Athena List of unproduced screenplays about women leaders — will receive $20,000 to help advance her project.
Jennifer Vanderbes’ script about FDA medical reviewer Frances Kelsey, The Gatekeeper, was on the Barnard College event’s Black List-inspired Athena List of unproduced screenplays about women leaders.
She will receive $20,000 to help advance her script to the next stage of development.
The Gatekeeper, a historical drama based on Vanderbes’ upcoming nonfiction book Wonder Drug, also supported by the Sloan Foundation, focuses on Kelsey’s battle in the early 1960s to keep the drug thalidomide off the American market.
The grant gives Vanderbes $20,000 to advance her script to the next stage of development, with live reading of the script set for December 7 at Barnard.
AFF’s partnership with the Sloan Foundation is aimed at boosting the number of female filmmakers working to highlight the importance of women in the sciences. The collaboration also seeks to challenge stereotypes about women in science and technology and advance a new narrative around women’s leadership in STEM.
Vanderbes’ script and book, Sloan Foundation vice president and program director Doron Weber said in a statement, tell “the story of another pioneering “hidden figure” in STEM and the obstacles and prejudice she had to overcome to safeguard human health.”
Athena Film Festival co-founder and artistic director Melissa Silverstein 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 13th annual Athena Film Festival, a collaboration between Barnard College’s Athena Center for Leadership Studies and Women and Hollywood, is set for March 2-5, 2023.