Independent Lens
Cooked: Survival by Zip Code
The repercussions from the 1995 Chicago heat wave on the city's entrenched poverty, economic and social isolation, and racism.
A Healthy Baby Girl
A woman who contracted cancer as the result of exposure to a synthetic hormone in utero documents her journey with humor and grace.
- Series
- POV
- Premiere Date
- June 17, 1997
- Length
- 60 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Open Call
Producer
Judith Helfand
Filmmaker, activist and educator Judith Helfand is best known for her ability to take the dark, cynical worlds of chemical exposure and heedless corporate behavior and make them personal, resonant, highly charged, and entertaining. Her films, The Uprising of ’34 (co-directed with George Stoney), the Sundance-award-winning Blue Vinyl (co-directed… Show more
- Other ITVS Films
- Cooked: Survival by Zip Code
- The Uprising of '34
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The Film
A Healthy Baby Girl is an intimate, humorous, yet searing exploration of what happens when science, marketing, and corporate power enter our deepest family relationships. A Healthy Baby Girl is an intergenerational story of one family’s response to an ethical and technological crisis, experienced from their home in Merrick, Long Island.
In 1963, filmmaker Judith Helfand’s mother was prescribed the drug diethylstilbestrol (DES), meant to prevent miscarriage and ensure a healthy baby. But technology is rarely a benign midwife. In 1990, at age 25, Helfand was diagnosed with DES-related cervical cancer. She went home to her family to heal from a radical hysterectomy. There she picked up her camera. Her video diary, A Healthy Baby Girl, was shot over five years and goes beyond loss to document mother-daughter love, family renewal, survival, political awakening, and community activism.
