Hope and Healing: The Untold Story of the Ellis Island Hospital

FAIN: GN-50373-04

Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc. (Melrose, MA 02176-3933)
Lorie Conway (Project Director: November 2003 to June 2005)

Scripting of a one-hour documentary film on the history of the Ellis Island Hospital from 1902 to 1930.

This one-hour documentary film will relate the untold history of this “hospital of all nations” and will show how, in spite of restrictive legislation and extreme pressure from nativists, the hospital fulfilled its mission “to admit not reject.” Archival research that I have conducted with the support of a NEH Development grant demonstrates that the doctors and nurses at the Ellis Island Hospital adhered to their humanitarian mission to heal even in the face of extraordinary political pressures. To date no film or book has been published about this history.