The Breast Cancer Diaries

Description

Accolades
Honorable Mention Award International Union Against Cancer Film Festival
Outreach and Education Award Maine Cancer Foundation

“…a truthful, moving and often genuinely funny documentary recording of a remarkable and ultimately inspiring struggle.” -XM Satellite Radio

Synopsis

When Murray-Paige, a former local news reporter and anchor, is diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 38, she sets up a diary camera in her bedroom. Ann’s video diaries—raw and true—offer an intimate chronicle of a young mother’s nine month journey with breast cancer, punctuated with humor, poignancy and romance. The Breast Cancer Diaries is a chronicle of illness met with attitude, symbolized by the “Cancer Sucks” button that Ann pins on her shirt. Throughout it all there is humor: from a hospital flashing scene, to a young son’s attempt to heal his mother with a whoopee cushion. With video diaries and verite footage woven together, The Diaries is a real-time portrayal of the unique issues and juggling act that face the 1 in 7 women in the world who are diagnosed with breast cancer. battle—that of a young woman and mother facing a life threatening illness. The resulting documentary is an unfettered, unvarnished memoir of the year that changed one woman’s life.

Director

Linda Pattillo is the founder of Linda Pattillo Productions, a television documentary production company.

As an award-winning television news correspondent she covered the globe for CNN, ABC NEWS and major local news stations for 20 years. Her most recent assignment was a national correspondent for the former CNN Sunday night newsmagazine CNN & TIME where she focused on social issues, including child abuse, childhood lead poisoning, and the problems faced by homeless families. Prior to joining CNN, Pattillo reported for ABC News as foreign correspondent based in London. Her work appeared regularly on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and Good Morning America. Among her assignments: the revolution in Zaire; the conflict in Bosnia; the military coup and American military intervention in Haiti; the famine and US intervention in Somalia; the historic meeting between Pope John Paul and Cuban leader Fidel Castro; and the first Persian Gulf War. She was the only female television correspondent to travel with frontline U.S. troops during their assault on Kuwait during the ground war.

Pattillo has been honored with many major awards. For her reporting from Haiti she received the prestigious Alfred I. duPont -Columbia University Golden Batob and the Edward R. Murrow Award. She won a George Foster Peabody Award for an investigation into school bus safety, was twice nominated for national Emmy Awards and received two Emmy Awards for local news investigative reporting.

She earned an MA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a BS from Colgate University.